Hopefully your good friend TED will help you out with that. Not Ted Nugent. While I am sure sea turtles like "Cat Scratch Fever" as much as the next species, when they find themselves swept up in a fishing net, they can escape through a Turtle Excluder Device. Oh, that TED!
As Lekelia Jenkins writes in today's New York Times Scientist at Work blog, a Turtle Excluder solves what would seem like an insurmountable problem: creating a hole in the net big enough for a huge turtle to pass through but that prevents the escape of smaller critters like shrimp. The solution is actually quite simple: cover the hole with a trapdoor flap of netting that can only be opened by something heavy (like a sea turtle) but not something small (like fish or shrimp). Check it out:
Happy World Water Day!
In other news, Knut, arguably the world's most famous polar bear, died today at the age of four. He became famous as a cub because his mother rejected him and he was successfully hand-reared by a human. Among his accomplishments: sharing the cover of Vanity Fair with Leo DiCaprio. RIP Cute Knut.
No comments:
Post a Comment