Latest news with #Fishing
The Hindu
4 days ago
- Science
- The Hindu
How ocean science is feeding coastal India
Every morning, as fishing boats head out to sea, they carry more than just nets and bait; they carry insights from space. Thanks to the Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS) under the Ministry of Earth Sciences, thousands of fishermen are guided by Potential Fishing Zone (PFZ) advisories, generated using high-resolution satellite data and oceanographic analysis. These advisories, based on parameters such as sea surface temperature, chlorophyll concentration and ocean currents, pinpoint likely fish-rich areas, thereby helping fishermen cast their net with more confidence. The result? Better catches, higher incomes, lower fuel costs and a smaller carbon footprint. PFZ advisories are generated using high resolution satellite data from multiple sources and then disseminated to the fishermen daily. The impact is measurable. A survey by the National Council of Applied Economic Research, covering 757 fishermen across 34 districts in seven States, recorded 1,079 successful fishing trips guided by PFZ advisories. On average, each trip earned an additional ₹17,820, collectively netting extra income of ₹1.92 crore. INCOIS director T.M. Balakrishnan Nair, who carried out a study on the efficacy of PFZ advisories along with his team of scientists, found that 52% of fishermen received the advisories and 35% actively used them. In a follow-up study conducted in 117 Kerala villages between 2022 and 2023, Nair's team found a clear link between PFZ access and increased fish catch. The southwest coast, particularly Kerala, accounted for 37% of India's marine fish landings in 2023 with 69% of the catch comprising sardines and mackerel. In villages with major fishing harbours and landing centres such as Azheekkal, Beypore, Chellanam, Fort Kochi, Munambam, Neendakara and Sakthikulangara, the daily catch often exceeded 100 tonnes and occasionally peaked at 500 tonnes. 'Our findings revealed significantly higher fish catches on days when PFZ advisories were used, and even on the following day, validating their effectiveness across a wide area,' explained the INCOIS director. The analysis also revealed an interesting trend: planktivorous fish dominated catches on PFZ days, while carnivorous species were more common the next day, indicating a transfer of productivity through the food chain. The study, conducted between June 2022 and March 2023, found peak PFZ activity during July to September, coinciding with peak southwest monsoon. This period of increased ocean surface productivity, driven by monsoon winds, was marked by high chlorophyll levels and cooler sea surface temperatures due to coastal upwelling, which are ideal conditions for fish aggregation. During both the monsoon and post-monsoon seasons, planktivores and carnivores continued to dominate the catch. Scientists observed that nearshore PFZ occurrences were most frequent during the pre-monsoon months, especially February and March, a period that usually sees lower fish catch compared to the monsoon and post-monsoon seasons. This highlights the seasonal variability of PFZ events, which are closely linked to changing environmental conditions. The study found that planktonic prey, which is critical for planktivorous fish, peaked during the monsoon and post-monsoon periods. In contrast, prey species for carnivorous fish remained consistently available along the coast throughout the study period. Interestingly, the highest fish catches were often recorded the day after PFZ advisories were issued. Scientists believe this is due to a combination of fish aggregation patterns and the time fishermen take to act on the information. This insight enhances understanding of how timing affects the effectiveness of PFZ advisories. The research also underscored the value of using village-specific landing data to study coastal ecosystem productivity. Village-level catch data, when analysed alongside satellite-derived environmental information, can offer early indicators of ocean productivity and its link to fishery abundance, added Nair. The study recommends further refining PFZ advisories by incorporating local factors such as dominant gear types, craft used and operational depths. It also calls for in-situ experiments and long-term monitoring at dynamic and persistent ocean fronts to better understand changes in environmental triggers and food chain shifts, which are key to improving future fisheries forecasts. 'The study validates that PFZ events are associated with higher catches. It also demonstrates the potential of using village-specific landing data to explore productivity dynamics in coastal ecosystems,' said Nair. Other scientists involved in the study included Dhanya Mohan Lal, Harisha, Alakes Samanta, Sudheer Joseph and Sanjiba Baliarsingh.
CNA
01-06-2025
- Lifestyle
- CNA
Paul misses Florida fishing season but reels in a lunker in Paris
PARIS :Tommy Paul's rods may be gathering dust back home in Florida with the prime fishing season under way but the 12th-seed reeled in one of his biggest catches when he blasted past Australia's Alexei Popyrin in the French Open fourth round on Sunday. Paul, an enthusiastic amateur fisherman, admitted the rod and reel sport was sometimes on his mind even during baseline rallies on the world's biggest tennis stages. "Right now it's like the prime time season in South Florida for fishing, so I'm seeing a lot of great fish get caught while I'm away, and it's kind of breaking my heart," Paul told a press conference. "At least some people are catching them, right?" He did bag a whopper himself on Sunday though with his 6-3 6-3 6-3 win over Popyrin, becoming the first American male player to reach the last eight in Paris in 22 years. Paul also became the only active American player to reach the last eight on all three surfaces after his 2023 Australian Open semi-final and 2024 Wimbledon quarter-final runs. "For me it's just like a getaway. When I'm fishing, I'm not thinking about tennis. Sometimes when I'm playing tennis, I'm thinking about fishing," he said. "When I'm out there (fishing), it's like a complete separation from my job, from tennis. I think that's really healthy." Paul can land another trophy catch in the last eight where he will face either defending champion Carlos Alcaraz or fellow American and world number 13 Ben Shelton.
The Guardian
28-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Raw, romantic and radical: Joan Baez's 20 greatest songs – ranked!
As with a lot of her 60s peers, Joan Baez seemed slightly out of place in the 80s. She only released two studio albums that decade but came out swinging on Recently. It's a steely rebuttal of her ex-husband's memoir, which was downbeat about both their marriage and 60s radicalism: 'You could say we failed … but I prefer remembering the way we were.' Most of the Gulf Winds album leaned towards commerciality and a sound that would now be called yacht rock, but the 10-minute title track is something else: Baez alone with her guitar, singing a potent, moving reflection upon her childhood, her Mexican heritage, her father's idealism and her parents' divorce. The sound of Fishing is standard-issue late-90s post-grunge US rock, but it's a melodically powerful song: moreover, the barely contained fury with which Baez sings folk singer Richard Shindell's sharp lyrics – about an undocumented Latin American migrant facing a US immigration officer – is quite something to behold. A perfect early example of what Langston Hughes called Baez's 'transmutation into self': her ability to impose her own character on to traditional material. Samuel Pepys wrote of singing Barbara Allen on New Year's Eve 1665; it seems unlikely his version was as spellbinding as the one Baez recorded. There's something depressing about the fact that Baez's final album returned her to the territory of 1964's Birmingham Sunday, about the 16th Street Baptist church bombing: 44 years on, another protest song about another racist atrocity in a Black church, this time the 2015 Charleston shootings. Written by Zoe Mulford, it's an incredible song; Baez's reading lends it a stately dignity and power. A departure for Baez, possibly influenced by Joni Mitchell. Children and All That Jazz is, as its title suggests, a witty, charming meditation on motherhood ('go to bed now – it's quarter to nine, I'm tired') recorded with jazz pianist Hampton Hawes. The latter's solo is fantastic, as is Baez's dramatic, triple-tracked vocal. Amid the Joan album's covers of Lennon and McCartney, Tim Hardin and Jacques Brel, North stood out: it featured an early co-writing credit for Baez and a lovely, heart-rending melody. Peter Schickele's arrangement, meanwhile, is perfect: subtle, sympathetic, amping up the melancholy by way of strings and – very occasionally – glockenspiel. Baez's name is most closely associated with that of Bob Dylan, but she also recorded the definitive version of Dylan's friend and rival Phil Ochs' most celebrated song, turning it into a UK Top 10 hit in the process. It's a beautiful performance that amplifies the lyric's empathy for societal outcasts, and the anti-war message of its final verse. On which Baez, who came out as bisexual in 1973, offers a piano-backed and beautifully drawn portrait of two strangers meeting in a gay bar, which gradually turns into a rallying call. It was released in the year that American singer Anita Bryant began a virulent and widely publicised anti-gay campaign called Save Our Children. In a sense, Baez's take on Silver Dagger is bowdlerised – other versions feature the lovers reacting to parental disapproval with a suicide pact – but no matter. The opening track of her eponymous debut album revealed listeners were in the presence of someone special, her guitar-picking intricate but urgent, her voice pure but affecting. Both the previous year's Attica Prison uprising and her husband David Harris's imprisonment for refusing the Vietnam draft seem to hang over Prison Trilogy. It presses Nashville musicians into a pedal steel-decorated song, with a lovely tune that nevertheless carries an uncompromising message: 'Help us raze the prisons to the ground.' A ubiquitous protest song of the 60s and beyond, yet Baez's version is arguably the most iconic: partly because she sang it during the 1963 march on Washington, but mostly because it perfectly balances tenderness and steely determination. She later called the song 'trite', but she sounds like she believes every word. Apparently the first song Baez wrote alone, Sweet Sir Galahad sweetly details her widowed sister's romance with music producer Milan Melvin, setting the story of their courtship to the kind of melody that sounds as though it's always existed. Performing it at Woodstock, she called it 'mediocre'. It definitely isn't. Baez's 1971 recording of the Band's American civil war epic was her biggest hit, but you'll need to root through bootleg recordings of Bob Dylan's Rolling Thunder Tour to hear her best versions: far beefier-sounding than the studio version, amped up by the raw power of Dylan's backing band. The psychology behind some of Baez's Dylan covers can give you pause – Farewell Angelina could be about her, or Dylan's departure from the folk scene, or both. She sang it at the Newport folk festival at which he 'went electric', and the result is sad magic: her voice cuts through to the song's emotional core. In 2008, Joni Mitchell claimed she and Baez were frenemies – 'she would have broken my leg if she could' – but you wouldn't have known from this duet: their voices swoop around each other, the effect as warm as the sunlit room Baez stands in on the cover of Diamonds and Rust. Baez performed many Dylan songs, but Love Is Just a Four Letter Word is definitively hers: Dylan has never recorded or played the song live. Lyrically and melodically, it's fantastic, clearly a product of his songwriting zenith: if the sitar on the studio recording proves a period detail too far, there's a great 1976 live version. Written by Baez's brother-in-law Richard Fariña, about the Ku Klux Klan church bombing that also inspired John Coltrane's Alabama, Baez's performance is more lamentation than protest. It's a masterclass in the power of restraint, as if she has taken the line about singing 'so softly it'll do no one wrong' to heart. Come From the Shadows was a political album – it featured a song admonishing Dylan for his lack of engagement – but it also contained one of Baez's most beautiful love songs, about the restorative powers of a one-night stand. Or as she puts it: 'Passionate strangers who rescue each other from a lifetime of cares.' It's one of the great ironies of Baez's career: she is too often unfairly presented in pop history as merely an adjunct to Dylan's rise, yet the song you would present as incontrovertible proof of her greatness as a writer is about … Dylan. But for all its scattering of historical details, Diamonds and Rust could be about anyone: its cocktail of tender nostalgia, weariness ('here comes your ghost again') and simmering anger provoked by encountering an old flame with whom things ended badly is perfectly fixed, universally applicable and delivers an emotional gut punch.
Yahoo
03-03-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Get Ready for Takeoff: 2025 I BIRD NY Challenge Now Open
NEW YORK (WWTI) – The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) announced that the 2025 I BIRD NY Challenge, open to birders of all ages and skills, began on March 1, according to DEC. The challenge allows participants to identify and learn about birds, and program winners receive a commemorative I BIRD NY Challenge patch and the chance to win birding-related gifts. 'No matter where you live or where you come from, birdwatching is a fun, easy, and affordable activity that can be enjoyed by people of all ages, abilities, identities, and backgrounds,' DEC Interim Commissioner Sean Mahar said. 'Now with nearly 400 locations across New York State, the NYS Birding Trail welcomes new and experienced birders to enjoy both migrating and resident birds in a diverse variety of habitats.' Midwest winters are changing. So is the ancient sport of falconry DEC says the many habitat types found in New York State, ranging from the Atlantic Ocean's sandy beaches to the Catskill and Adirondack peaks, Great Lakes shorelines, and everything in between, make it a birder's delight, supporting over 450 distinct bird species year-round. The NYS Birding Trail allows both new and seasoned birders to discover the thrill of birding. This unique network of birding hotspots around New York State provides countless opportunities to connect with nature, whether it is watching owls in calm woodlands, monitoring shorebirds along gorgeous coastlines, or getting views of majestic eagles along quiet rivers. The trail is constantly expanding, with new destinations being added on a regular basis through a nomination and verification procedure. DEC also revealed 14 new spots for the NYS Birding Trail. The new locations are Rye Nature Center in the Hudson Valley Birding Trail Region and 13 Nassau County Parks, Recreation, and Museums properties in Long Island Birding Trail Region. Budget Amendment to help tiny fish is tossed by Virginia lawmakers Birdwatching is one of the fastest-growing outdoor recreation hobbies in the United States. According to the 2022 National Survey of Hunting, Fishing, and Wildlife-Associated Recreation, 7.4 million wildlife viewers earned $10.8 billion in New York State in 2022. This is an increase from four million New York resident wildlife viewers spending more than $6.4 billion per year in 2016. The I BIRD NY program was started in 2017 to expand the State's efforts to increase access to New York's enormous natural resources while also promoting free and low-cost opportunities to experience the great outdoors and connect with nature. 'North Shore Audubon Society enthusiastically welcomes the Nassau County addition of its excellent public preserves and parks to NY State Birding Trail,' said Peggy Maslow, North Shore Audubon Society. The 2025 I BIRD NY Challenge is available to all ages and closes on November 1, 2025. To complete the Challenge, individuals must identify any ten bird species of their choice and return a challenge form to DEC. In 2024, more than 1,800 birdwatchers completed this challenge, making it the program's highest-ever participation rate. As warming climate hammers coffee crops, this rare bean may someday be your brew Challenge sheets can be submitted online using Survey Monkey, or by email or mail. Entries must be received by November 15, 2025. The entry forms are also accessible in Spanish. All participants will receive a commemorative patch, a completion certificate and an entry into a drawing for birding prizes. Two youth and two adult winners will be chosen. Participants will also receive an extra prize entry if they submit a photo reflecting their challenge experience. Birdwatchers can get this year's challenge sheet at I BIRD NY, where they can also discover information on where and how to view birds, upcoming birding activities, a downloadable Beginner's Guide to Birding (also available in Spanish), and other resources. Those interested may also sign up for DEC's monthly birding newsletter, Words of a Feather, which delivers birding tips and tactics, NYS Birding Trail site recommendations, events, and more directly to their inbox. DEC also informs the public that Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) is still prevalent in wild birds and mammals. The public can assist reduce illness risk and spread by avoiding interaction between household animals and wild birds. The public is encouraged to report sick or dead wildlife here. 'Wildlife corridors' are encouraged to support Kenya's recovering animal populations When field personnel are unavailable to collect samples or carcasses from the landscape and removal is required, utilize appropriate personal safety equipment, such as disposable gloves, a mask, and eye protection. To avoid direct contact with the carcass or fluids, use a shovel to transfer it to a tripled garbage or contractor bag and deposit it in an outdoor trash receptacle. DEC's Animal Diseases webpage contains additional information regarding HPAI, such as how it spreads and which animals can become affected. As always, participants are invited to Love Our New York Lands throughout the year by following Leave No Trace TM principles and recreating safely and sustainably. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
02-03-2025
- General
- Yahoo
DEC announces 2025 BIRD NY Challenge
ROCHESTER, N.Y. (WROC) – The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation announced this year's I BIRD NY Challenge on Saturday to encourage New Yorkers to enjoy birding this spring. BIRD NY Challenge is for people of all ages and abilities. The challenge will allow the public to have the opportunity to learn about birds, identify them, and then challenge finishers will be given a commemorative BIRD NY Challenge patch and a chance to win birding-related prizes. The I BIRD NY program was launched in 2017 to build on the State's efforts to increase access to New York's vast natural resources and promote no- and low-cost opportunities to enjoy the great outdoors. Those with the DEC say those who take part in the challenge get to connect with nature, whether marveling at owls in woodlands, spotting shorebirds along coastlines, or seeing eagles by rivers. According to the 2022 National Survey of Hunting, Fishing, and Wildlife-Associated Recreation, 7.4 million wildlife watchers generated $10.8B in New York State in 2022. 'No matter where you live or where you come from, birdwatching is a fun, easy, and affordable activity that can be enjoyed by people of all ages, abilities, identities, and backgrounds,' DEC Interim Commissioner Sean Mahar said. 'Now with nearly 400 locations across New York State, the NYS Birding Trail welcomes new and experienced birders to enjoy both migrating and resident birds in a diverse variety of habitats.' Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
