Fish | featured news

In the hope of reconstructing a pivotal step in evolution — the colonization of land by fish that learned to walk and breathe air — researchers have decoded the genome of the coelacanth, a prehistoric-looking fish whose form closely resembles those seen in the fossils of 400 million years ago.

Every animal with bones has blood with hemoglobin, which binds with oxygen and makes the blood appear red. Every animal, that is, except one. The ocellated icefish (Chionodraco rastrospinosus) has gin-clear blood. And it has no scales. And it lives nowhere but the inky depths down to 3,200 feet (1 kilometer) in the icy waters off Antarctica.

Nonprofit ocean protection group Oceana took 1,215 samples of fish from across the United States and genetically tested them in order to bring us the following astonishing facts: 59% of the fish labeled "tuna" sold at restaurants and grocery stores in the US is not tuna. Sushi restaurants were far more likely to mislabel their fish than grocery stores or other restaurants.

What happens to fish that swim in waters tainted by traces of drugs that people take? When it's an anti-anxiety drug, they become hyper, anti-social and aggressive, a study found.

A fish containing over 2,500 times Japan's legal limit for radiation in seafood has been caught in the vicinity of the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant, the facility's operator reported. A ‘murasoi’ fish, similar to a rockfish, was caught at a port inside the plant, according to AFP. Plant owner Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) indicated that the amount of cesium measured 254,000 becquerels per kilogram – 2,540 times Japan's legal limit for radiation in seafood.

A massive fish die-off in the Salton Sea is the prime suspect in a rotten smell that swept the region, but experts can't recall a bad odor ever traveling so far. When the rotten egg smell wafted into the Santa Clarita United Methodist Church in Saugus on Monday morning, Kathy Gray thought the church's sewer pipe had burst.

News that piranhas, which are native to the South American waters of the Amazon, have come to the Chinese city of Liuzhou, has compelled local authorities to offer a $150 reward to anyone who can land one of the fish, any way they can.

In lakes and rivers across parched areas of the U.S., heat and lower water levels are reducing oxygen levels -- and killing fish populations by the thousands.

Plenty of kids accidentally swallow bugs or eat dirt while playing, but 12-year-old Anil Barela went a bit further: he accidentally inhaled a nine-centimeter fish while playing in river in central India's Khargone district.

Peeing while swimming in a lake may not just be taboo -- it could also be lethal, for the fish. At least that's what a group of anglers contend, blaming swimmers for the 500 dead fish that have turned up in a picturesque German lake near Hamburg, The Local reported.