#sea_turtles — Public Fediverse posts

Efforts like this are sometime an excercise in futility - and sometimes they will exceed the wildest expectations of those curating the initiative.

Sometimes all you can do is just rinse and repeat, in the hopes that there will be an eventual cultural shift in the reasons why some species are driven to such brinks of extinction - i.e., poaching.

One such story local to me was the demise of white sea bass. A success story really.

When I was a kid I used to go fishing on local piers and boats. Signs everywhere informing fishermen that there was a moratorium on the taking of white sea bass. in Later years, that moratorium, in conjunction with a captive breeding program in conjunction with Scripps Institution of Oceanography allowed biologists to track just how successful (or unsuccessful) the program was.

We dosed the juveniles in their tanks at different ages with tetracycline. The antibiotic had the side affect of marking the bones of the developing fish, and this could be observed after examining cross-sections of their bones, much like the rings of a tree. It also allowed us to determine which exact batch of juveniles a particular specimen was a member of.

After some time, and an observance of more white sea bass turning up on the end of a hook, a bounty program was started so that the Department of Fish and Game would collect specimens which would later be examined in labs at the Hubbs-Seaworld Research Institute in Sandy Eggo.

It may just be because it was a California phenomenon, where people largely respected gaming regulations, and I realize that gator skinned cowboy boots and purses are popular, as are the horns of white rhinos and elephant ivory - three very insidiously compelling incentives for poaching those species; but average folks fishing along the coast of California were more than happy to comply with regulations that were perceived as in the best interest of an endangered species.

Today, there's actually size and bag limits on white sea bass, a very yummy catch that is common on the dinner plate. Decades of overfishing, and a conservation program to avert extinction as a result were an overwhelming success.

I hope this can extend to that of the Siamese Crocodile too.

#tallship #extinction #Siamese_Crocodiles #White_Sea_Bass #rhinocerous #elephants #sea_turtles #dodo_bird #takahe You can haz #Cheezburgerz! 🍔

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