Scientists Test Plan to Have Fish Catch Themselves

[babylonsister]

Nope, you can't make it up!


‘Here, fishy fishy;’ science will bait Pavlovian hook

By Jay Lindsay THE ASSOCIATED PRESS


BOSTON— Call them Pavlov’s fish: Scientists are testing a plan to train fish to catch themselves by swimming into a net when they hear a tone that signals feeding time.

If it works, the system could eventually allow black sea bass to be released into the open ocean, where they would grow to market size, then swim into an underwater cage to be harvested when they hear the signal.

“It sounds crazy, but it’s real,” said Simon Miner, a research assistant at the Marine Biological Laboratory at Wood’s Hole, which received a $270,000 grant for the project from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.


Miner said the trained fish could someday be used to bolster the depleted black sea bass stock. Farmed fish might become better acclimated to the wild if they can be called back for food every few days.

The bigger goal is to defray the costs of fish farming, an increasingly important source of the world’s seafood. If fish can be trained to return to the farmer after feeding in the open ocean for several days, farms could save money on feed and reduce the amount of fish waste released in concentrated areas.

The key question for fish farmers: How many fish will actually return, and how many will be lost to predators or simply swim away?

more...

http://www.telegram.com/article/20080327/NEWS/803270433/1052/NEWS01

[SpiralHawk]

1. Hmmmm? Republicon Homelander Fish?

Trained to be suckers for phony propaganda...

Sorry, I just lost my appetite...

[bananas]

2. Reminds me of the story of parakeets trained to say "Here kitty kitty"

in the novel Illimunatus! by Robert Anton Wilson.

[frogcycle]

3. sounds nutty, but would actually be great if possible

Fish farms are an ecological disaster, and depletion of wild stocks is likewise.

From years of keeping tropical fish I can attest that they can learn stuff, can adjust to conditions. Mine definitely know me, can recognize me from across the room (don't like it if i have a baseball cap on though), clearly recognize the container of some food pellets they love that I only give them every few days. I started dropping those pellets in a different place trying to get them to a bottom feeder who'd like them, and the silver dollars figured it out after just a couple of times, quit agitating at the front of the tank when they saw me with them and dashed to the back by the filter tube where they knew I'd be dropping them. So why not train sea bass?

[rocktivity]

8. Maybe that's why I saw my sister's fish only twice

they would spend most of the time hiding under the rocks in the tank, and occasionally come out and congregate in one corner of the tank--the corner near where the food was kept. Then, as if on a signal, they'd all disappear among the rocks again. I guess it was me they didn't like.

:headbang:
rocknation

[The2ndWheel]

4. Damn, we're pretty twisted

"If it works, the system could eventually allow black sea bass to be released into the open ocean, where they would grow to market size, then swim into an underwater cage to be harvested when they hear the signal."

That has all kinds of creepiness dripping from it. Then we'll complain when something like Monsanto wants to own the DNA of plants. It's the same bullshit. We can't just fish fish out of existence and pay the bill. No, we have to try to take evolution out of the equation. Why do we do that? Because evolution doesn't "defray the costs". Hopefully the fish will escape.

[sam sarrha]

5. they already spawn salmon in the nets to which they migrate back into

[Gman]

6. How do you train them and say

Ok... all you guys that are of market size, come eat, heh, heh, heh... all you small fry stay where you're at?

[dysfunctional press]

7. they could use different sounds for each generation released...?

:shrug:

[frogcycle]

9. well, they say "underwater cage"

it would be pretty easy to design it to screen out the little ones

as you lifted it out they'd just swim out

[Richard Steele]

10. Stage one- train bass to follow simple commands. Stage 2:

Train them to wear "lasers".