New exquisitely preserved fossils from Latvia cast light on a key event in our own evolutionary history, when our ancestors left the water and ventured onto land. Swedish researchers Per Ahlberg and Henning Blom from Uppsala University have reconstructed parts of the animal and explain the transformation in the new issue of Nature.

A major initiative to create alternative nesting sites for the largest colony of Caspian terns in the world – and to help protect juvenile salmon and steelhead in the Columbia River – is finding early success.

New data presented today at EULAR 2008, the Annual Congress of the European League Against Rheumatism in Paris, France, show that intake of oily fish is associated with a reduced risk of developing rheumatoid arthritis (RA), whereas psychosocial work stress and smoking can increase the risk of developing the condition.

Fishermen hold empirical knowledge that tuna aggregate under floating objects, such as lengths of old rope, pieces of wood, or even large marine mammals. There is still no full explanation for this aggregation behaviour, but the past 20 years have seen purse-seine fishery operators take advantage of the associated concentrations of fish.

In 2003, haddock on Georges Bank experienced the largest baby boom ever documented for the stock, with an estimated 800 million new young fish entering the population.

Fishery biologist Sandy Sutherland looks through the lens of the microscope at tiny sections of fish earbones, known as otoliths, each showing annual bands of growth. She carefully counts the bands to determine the age of the fish, then moves on to the next sample.

Princeton researchers have invented a method for turning simple data about rainfall and river networks into accurate assessments of fish biodiversity, allowing better prediction of the effects of climate change and the ecological impact of man-made structures like dams.

Humans have regularly been introducing exotic species into natural environments in order to provide for their nutritional necessities or meet less indispensable purposes such as horticulture, fishing or hunting. However, the particular environments are not always adapted for hosting new arrivals.

While rabbits continue to ravage Australia’s native landscapes, rabbit fish may help save large areas of the Great Barrier Reef from destruction.

Biologist Pablo Cermeño Villanueva defended his PhD thesis at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), providing a tool to determine the age of anchovies with greater accuracy on a monthly or even weekly basis, thus enabling studies of the earliest phases of life to be undertaken.

Scientists have discovered an Antarctic fish species that adopts a winter survival strategy similar to hibernation. Reporting this week in the journal PLoS ONE, the online journal from the Public Library of Science, scientists from British Antarctic Survey (BAS) and the University of Birmingham reveal, for the first time, that the Antarctic ‘cod’ Notothenia coriiceps effectively ‘puts itself on ice’ to survive the long Antarctic winter.

The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) announced trade quotas governing the export of wild sturgeon and their prized caviar eggs from the Caspian Sea.