Science

Fish species including alewife, blueback herring, shad and American eel all migrate between fresh and salt water habitats. An upcoming NOAA study in Maine will attempt to better understand these migrations because commercial salt-water fish such as Atlantic cod and striped bass depend on the migrating fish for food.

Sampling will occur in coastal waters off of the Kennebec and Penobscot Rivers starting this summer. Local fishermen have been hired to help crew the Gloria Michelle/ (pictured here courtesy of NOAA) survey the waterways.

“Determining the ecological effects that changes in the abundance of river-run species a....

NOAA’s Fisheries Service has ruled that Atlantic wolffish are not currently in danger of extinction, although the fish will continue to be classified as a "species of concern."

This is the agency's final decision on a petition issued by the Conservation Law Foundation in 2008 which requested that the species be listed as threatened or endangered under the federal Endangered Species Act. Dr. Erica Fuller and Dr. Les Watling of the University of Maine were co-petitioners.

Wolffish do not have much commercial value but they do get caught in ground traps. The species has a decent survival rate after being caught and released, according ....

About half of 36 fish stocks in the Northwest Atlantic Ocean, many of them commercially valuable species, have been shifting northward over the last four decades, with some stocks nearly disappearing from U.S. waters as they move farther offshore, according to a new study by NOAA researchers.

Their findings, published in the journal Marine Ecology Progress Series, show the impact of changing coastal and ocean temperatures on fisheries from Cape Hatteras, N.C., to the Canadian border.

Janet Nye, a postdoctoral researcher at NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC) laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass. and the lead author of the st....

On Tuesday, Professor Ken Donaldson from the University of Edinburgh and Dr Qasim Chaudhry attended a hearing with the U.K. House of Lords to discuss the risks of using nanotechnology in food.

As part of the evidence given, the scientists discussed the following issues:

i) the ability of nanoparticles to cross the gut wall and other cellular barriers;
ii) the potential novel toxic effects of such nanoparticles in the human body;
iii) the possibility that other materials in the gut (e.g. bacteria or other contaminants) may attach to the nanoparticles and be transported across the gut wall (the Trojan Horse Effect).

There are over ....