It’s a sunny day, I’m on one of my favourite train routes (up the Northumberland coast, between Newcastle and Edinburgh), en route for St Andrews – home, indeed, of the Sea Mammal Research Unit – so it seems appropriate to forget a recent funding disappointment, and the brewing scientific feud I described last week, and to concentrate instead on cool stuff that whales do. Please don’t expect anything about communication, intelligence, or other cuddly things; this is a tale of... Read more

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No – not another fisheries blog. This time, I’m in a qandry, unsure whether (once again) to engage, through the scientific literature, in another public squabble. More specifically, I’m pondering the following vexed question: exactly how bad does a paper have to be in order for me to drop what I’m supposed to be doing, fire up the old critical faculties, and spit out a vituperative rebuttal? At what stage does ‘petty complaint’ upgrade to ‘vital corrective response’? Here’s the... Read more

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Fish fish fish fish fish.
Fish fish fish fish.
Eating fish!
[Fish, by Mr Scruff] It is impossible for anyone who has ever studied marine fisheries ecology not to feel a twinge of guilt about joining in Mr Scruff’s enthusiastic refrain. Fish stocks globally are in such a sorry state, subject to such unsustainable exploitation, that to eat wild fish seems incompatible with any kind of environmental sensibility. At the same time, though, seafood’s just so damn tasty, and healthy to boot –... Read more

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Back in July Nature ran a news feature on A world without mosquitoes, in which the general desirability and feasibility of mosquito eradication was discussed. Kind of a, ‘what have mosquitoes ever done for us?’ Apart, that is, from acting as a super-efficient vector for a multitude of nasty diseases like malaria, yellow fever, and West Nile virus. Now, I agree that we should not a priori rule out any course of action that can reduce the enormous human suffering... Read more

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