Canadian Angling

Many people are curious about the mayfly and its life cycle. They are insects which belong to the Order Ephemeroptera (from the Greek ephemeros = “short-lived”, pteron = “wing”, referring to the brief lifespan of adults). The adults are short-lived, from a few minutes to a few days depending on the species. About 2,500 species are known worldwide, including about 630 species in North America.

First the female mayfly, that has fertilized eggs, dips its abdomen in the river, stream or lake and deposits its eggs. At this time it is very venerable to attack by birds and fish. When you see fish feeding on the surface, they are capturing these insects. Read the rest of this entry »

Canadian Angling.com (Feb. 3, 2011) Scientists are working on a plan that may benefit our oceans by keeping them cleaner by using the Sea Cucumber. One of the challenges of fish farming is what to do with the refuse that is produced and the scientists at Newcastle University (UK) may have come up with an answer; the sea cucumber. The sea cucumbers are marine animals with a leathery skin and an elongated body and are an Asian delicacy. Sea cucumbers are echinoderms—like starfish and sea urchins. The sea cucumber lives primarily on the oceans floor, cleaning up and debris that falls to the bottom. Sea cucumbers feed on tiny particles like algae, minute aquatic animals, or waste materials. They break down these particles into even smaller pieces, which become fodder for bacteria, and thus recycle them back into the ocean ecosystem. Earthworms perform a similar function on land ecosystems. Read the rest of this entry »

Canadian Angling.com (Jan. 24, 2011) Zooplankton are an extremely important food source for all aquatic animals especially fish. Zooplankton feed off of Phytoplankton, making them the second link in the marine food chain. Zooplankton then gets eaten by fish and larger crustaceans. Many trout fry actually feed on zooplankton as soon as they emerge from their eggs (except for brown trout fry that feed on algae). Many believed that zooplankton were only algae feeders, but new research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that about 1/3 of their food comes from material that comes from land in lake watersheds like leaves, roots, logs, etc. Read the rest of this entry »

Canadian Angling.com (December 16, 2010) We know that it is hard to believe it, but scientists believe that fish are showing personality traits. No, they can’t talk or communicate yet, but researchers at the University of Gothenburg have found that brown trout have individual characters and show different personalities. Over the years, Bart Adriaenssens (Zoology-University of Gothenburg) has studied juvenile trout in the rivers and streams along the west coast of Sweden. He stated that “My results show that it are not just humans and other mammals that exhibit personality. Read the rest of this entry »

Canadian Angling.com (December 14, 2010) — Recently two separate studies, one in England and another in Cyprus, have raised a major concern about our rivers and lakes. The concern is what the effects that man made chemicals are having on the ecosystems that we live in and subsequently their effect on humans. We will first look at the recent research by the Universities of Exeter and Brunel on endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDC’s). The universities have recently completed a 4 year study that shows that these chemicals are changing the sex of the fish. This is the first direct evidence that these “gender bending” chemicals are effecting the reproduction cycle of fish in UK Rivers. Read the rest of this entry »

Many people don’t realize this, but 2 billion gallons of water are diverted from the Great Lakes daily to tributaries of the Mississippi River at Chicago. This reduces the water levels of Port Huron and Georgian Bay but also allows invasive species (such as the Asian carp), an easy method to move from one watershed to another.
The Chicago River is 156 miles long. The problem started back at the turn of the century. Chicago was being overwhelmed from sewage and stockyard runoff and it was polluting the city’s drinking water. There were deadly outbreaks of typhoid and cholera from the polluted water. Many of the Chicago residents used to call the river “that stinking river” because of the pollution from the growing industrial economy which dumped into the river. Read the rest of this entry »

Canadian Angling.com (September 7, 2010): One of our worst fears regarding climate change is the adverse effects it has on the pollination of crops by bees. Bees are extremely important in the pollination of all pollinating flowering plants and are the major pollinator in ecosystems. Bees pollinate many of the trees and plants in our gardens. It is estimated that bees pollinate 1/3 of the food we consume. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the key species that scientists monitor is amphibian populations, like the frog. One of the major reasons that researchers like to use frogs is that they are extremely sensitive to the environment. They can warn about changes to their habitat that affect them such as pollution, chemicals and other ecological problems. Recently a study by North Carolina State shows that the data that the researchers has been using may be flawed and the population estimates may be incorrect, leading to over estimates of the frog populations. Read the rest of this entry »

Canadian Angling.com: While today’s news that the oil well in the Gulf of Mexico has finally been capped, Canada has had its own oil spill to be concerned about on the St. Lawrence River. This is the first ever oil spill on the St. Lawrence Spillway and is expected to be cleaned up in 1 week if conditions remain the same. Unfortunately the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico will require many years of cleaning and much more resources to repair the damage to the environment and the people’s lives it has affected. We actually wonder if BP will actually pay for all the damage. It is their responsibility, not the taxpayer. Read the rest of this entry »