Order of the Gauhati High Court in the matter of Hasibur Rahman Vs State of Assam & Others dated 19/04/2024. The state of Assam vide Notification, January 20, 2024 has published a Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) for restricting import/stock/sale of fish imported from other than self sufficient states by road/river …
RIGHT on the heels of the Tomsk-7 nuclear disaster, the British weekly, The Observer, reports Russia has been dumping nuclear reactors at sea and plutonium from nuclear warheads is posing a threat to international fishing grounds off the Norwegian coast. The weekly also alleges that the Russian submarine fleet is …
KERALA'S coastal waters have become a battleground, putting traditional fisherfolk, who don't have an alternative vocation, against operators of mechanical monsters looking for quick profits from the sea. Linked closely with the dispute is the fate of the marine ecosystem. Conflicts between traditional and mechanised fisherfolk take place all along …
A PROPOSED sewage treatment plant has trapped the 6.49-sq-km temple town of Guruvayur in controversy, pitting its residents against the villagers of nearby Chakankandam, where a 1.5 million litres per-day sewage disposal plant is to be located. Guruvayur residents held a seven-day sit-in recently to press for early implementation of …
WHILE the European Community has rejected vehement French demands for a ban on the import of cheap fish primarily from Russia and other non-EC countries, it has agreed to monitor fish exports from these countries more closely. France -- one of the biggest fish consumers in the EC -- had …
Chief minister Biju Patnaik's attempt to wriggle off the Chilika prawn project hook has left him impaled even more firmly. The onus of proving the Chilika Aquatic Farm Ltd (CAFL) project is environmentally safe has fallen on his government following a state high court order that Orissa officials must conduct …
CONTROLLING floods in the plains is laudable, but it is not a harmless activity as far as near-shore fish are concerned. Almost all fish-harvesting in Bangladesh is near the shore. All the dams, culverts, embankments and river closures installed in Bangladesh to protect 3 million, flood-prone hectares, have led to …
SCIENTISTS from the University of Michigan in the US have discovered that stony lumps of calcium carbonate, known as otoliths, found in the ears of most fishes, can offer clues to seasonal temperatures thousands or even millions of years ago (Science, Vol 258 No 5085). The finding has given a …
TRANSGENIC fish may soon be served at your favourite restaurant. Indian scientists are trying to genetically engineer certain fish species to make them grow larger faster. In this controversial technique, an organism is injected with genes from a foreign organism and once the transfer is accepted, a transgenic organism is …
THE GRANT of fishing rights on Haleji Lake, Pakistan, to a contractor has stirred up a hornet's nest and a group of environmentalists gone to court wanting the award to be invalidated. The group says organised, large-scale fishing in the lake will disturb the large number of migratory water fowl …
THE FISH and the fishermen are both in trouble. To prevent a total collapse of fish stocks and the fishing industry, a drastic reduction in the European Community's (EC) fishing fleet has been proposed under the Sea Fish (Conservation) Bill. The critically low fish stock includes cod and haddock. The …
THE INCREASE in phosphate wastes released into rivers over the last 20 years may in turn have increased the frequency of "red tides" (coloured springtime algal efflorescences) which poison and kill numerous fish in American estuaries. Certain single-celled algae called dinoflagellates , which make up a large part of ocean …
BACTERIA large enough to be visible to the human eye have been discovered within the gut of a surgeonfish (Acanthurus nigrofuscus) caught off the Great Barrier Reef in Australia (Science, Vol. 256, No. 5064). These symbiotic bacteria, about one million times larger than ordinary bacteria, probably digest the algae the …
FISH TRADERS of Andhra Pradesh have a good market in far away Assam. Even after paying transportation charges of upto Rs 8 per kg of fish taken to Assam, the traders get to put away a tidy sum for themselves. The irony is that Assam itself abounds in wetlands, but …
The pollen so sharp that the wind sneezed, its belly so speckled with rashes that it turned visible. The way the fish walked up the beaches you'd think they had turned amphibian. The fisherfolk came out, hollering; as the women tenderly pushed them back in the sea saying "they are …
THE NATION'S malaria control authorities are increasingly resorting to a method introduced by the British as far back as 1908 to check the disease: rearing fish that feed on mosquito larvae. The problem they face is that after a sharp decline in malaria from 6.46 million cases in the mid-70s …
TWENTY-ONE members of Parliament have petitioned the Prime Minister to save Chilka Lake, a major wetland in the country. They have protested against the state government giving advance possession of 400 ha of the lake to the Chilka. Aquatic Farm Ltd for prawn culture to new agri-business company of the …
Methods of digestion of fish samples for mercury determination by flameless atomic absorption spectrophotometry have been investigated. Digestion in Teflon bombs, Kjeldahl flasks, or borosilicate test tubes gives comparable precisions and mercury recoveries. Because of their cost and effect in limiting productivity, Teflon bombs were considered unnecessary for analysis of …
A method for the concurrent determination of methyl mercury and inorganic mercury by flameless atomic absorption spectroscopy (AAS) is described. Fifty-seven samples of juvenile black marlin fish were analyzed for inorganic and methyl mercury, and total mercury was calculated by addition of the 2 values. The sensitivity of the method …