New course, new perspective

This semester one of my courses I chose to take is called 'Fishery Models'. There were four of us in the seminar today, and this lecture was an introduction to, what I like to now think of as, the Norwegian opinion of fishery operations. My lecturer stated that over-fishing should not be taken as a survey from several fishermen because of course as you add more fishermen into the equation, each boat's catch will be smaller. He also stated that we cannot say that there is over-exploitation when we have not yet overexploited the species. If a fisherman was not landing enough catch, then ultimately he would switch to a more abundant and/or profitable fish. (He spent 2 hours talking about this, so I'll leave it here for now)

It was just interesting. There are scientific papers that say we have fished many species to the brink of collapse, but it appears that the Bergen (a major fishing industry area) professors (or at least this one)  are so strongly opposed to the hypothesis that we are depleting the ocean. Coming from NZ, where we were taught the conservation side of the story, to Norway is a big transition.

Another neat thing (Dad, you'd be interested in this) - one of my classmates is doing his PhD on 'catch and release mortality' by angling. I'll ask him more about it on Thursday if there is time.

Today I picked up my IMR access card and tomorrow Leif (my supervisor) is going to show me around the building and get me settled at my desk there. Hopefully we can also discuss more of my thesis, and the parameters that we will be looking at regarding the mackerel summer migration.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Smalahove

Image
Many Norwegian traditions are distinctly regional. Even recipes are variable by region to go along with dialects that can be different by town separated by just 50 kilometers. This tradition, that both Marius and I were new to trying, was from a town just about an hour and a half east of Bergen called Voss....smalahove, or half of a sheep's head that is cooked in a broth for several hours. Smalahove comes from two Norwegian words: smale = sheep, and hove = head. It is served before Christmas with potatoes, mashed rutabaga, and red cabbage. Many of my friends were telling me that the cheek is supposed to be the best part, and others were saying that they wouldn't dare eat it. So I can now say that I have done something that many other Norwegians haven't dared try. I actually really enjoyed it! It had a texture like corned beef and had a very nice flavor. Marius went as far as to try the tongue, and thought that eating the eye was a normal thing, so tried that as well...bu...
Read more

In case you missed it, I moved back to Bergen

Image
But only temporarily, as of yet. In the beginning of the month I took the train from Oslo to Bergen. It was a beautiful trip cross-country ascending to over 1000m above sea level and back down again. My friend Knut said that I could stay at his place until an apartment was available to rent. I picked up the key from his mom, dropped off my things, and went back downtown to go to my Norwegian course. He was out of town for the week for work, and my first day of work was not until the following Monday. So I used the next five days reacquainting myself with Bergen....mainly by running around my old neighborhood. On Monday (Nov 10) I started my new (tempoary) part time job at UniResarch Sars International Centre for Marine Molecular Biology...UniSars for short. Technically I am called a "research technician", but I'm more like a glorified dishwasher at the moment. I made sure to tell the researchers that I am more than capable to help them if they need an extra pa...
Read more

FIFA 2010 South Africa

Image
FIFA 2010 kicked off on June 11 and today, New Zealand will today make a return to the world’s greatest football stage exactly 28 years to the day since their FIFA World Cup debut. The All Whites will take on Slovakia at 11PM (New Zealand time). It is hard to say whether it will be a good game or not; however, the fact that NZ is in the world cup for the first time in so long is enough of a reason to stay up so late. Saturday morning was the big USA vs. England match. The Americans are so happy with a tie that the New York Post had this as its front page: The time difference makes it a bit hard to keep up with seeing the games, but it's always fun to rub in the fact that the British tied the US in their first World Cup game this year to some British friends. Next exam is Saturday for Invertebrate Diversity. And only 20 days to go til Thailand!!
Read more