Four Fish 3 Flashcards
Yukon
a river in northwestern North America that rises in Yukon Territory in northwestern Canada and flows west for 1,870 miles (3,020 km) through central Alaska to the Bering Sea.
“Each burst [of Salmon entering the Yukon delta] may be headed for a slightly different bit of the Yukon’s nearly two-thousand-mile- long watershed, and Fish and Game makes the argument that the more these sub-subpopulations survive and thrive, the richer the overall salmon genome is and the more adaptable and elastic the population will remain in the event of a crisis.” (29)
gillnets
A gillnet is a large net wall that hangs vertically in the water. Floats line the top of the net, while weights line the bottom of the net. The net is made of transparent monofilament line, so fish and other animals are unable to see it. Fishermen vary the mesh size or size of the net holes depending on the size of the species they want to capture. The mesh size or net holes are designed to be large enough for the head of the fish to pass through it, but not its body. As a result, when fish swim into the net they are entangeld by their gills.
“We were fishing with gill nets that had mesh openings big enough to accommodate the head and shoulders of a chum salmon-a less illustrious fish than a king salmon and sometimes called a “dog salmon.” (31)
monofilament
a single strand of man made fiber.
feed conversion ratio
the number of pounds of feed required to produce one pound of meat.
breeders were able to apply Lush’s principles and accelerate growth rates so that the “feed conversion ratio” could be lowered substantially.
corrugated
shaped into alternate ridges and grooves.
“The camp consisted of a tidy blue house at the center of a clearing, a corrugated-steel smoking shed, and a four-legged corrugated-steel canopy under which Laurie and I sat.”
vesitige
the last small part that remains of something.
“Many of farmed salmon’s detractors were keepers of the vestigial recollection of wild salmon that was slipping away from human memory.” (48)
toxicology
the study of poisonous chemicals, drugs, etc., and how a person or other living thing reacts to them.
polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs)
any of several compounds that are produced by replacing hydrogen atoms in biphenyl with chlorine, have various industrial applications, and are toxic environmental pollutants which tend to accumulate in animal tissues —called also PCB
” ‘The rivers have contaminated the oceans, and the PCBs are getting bioconcentrated within the ocean food web.’ “ (51)
“No PCBs have been manufactured in the United States since 1977, but their legacy lives on in the fatty tissue of Americans.” (51)
inertness
chemistry : not able to affect other chemicals when in contact with them : not chemically reactive.
“The same inertness that made PCBs an ideal flame retardant and insulator made them equally impervious to human enzymes that try to cleave and eliminate them from the body
electric insulator
a substance or device that does not readily conduct electricity.
“PCBs, a by-product of the manufacture of electric insulators, flame retardant, and most recently, computer chips.”
retardant
not readily susceptible to fire.
“PCBs, a by-product of the manufacture of electric insulators, flame retardant, and most recently, computer chips.”
ppm
parts per million also can be expressed as milligrams per liter (mg/L). This measurement is the mass of a chemical or contaminate per unit volume of water. Seeing ppm or mg/L on a report means the same thing.
MD ppm is like one inch in 16 miles, one second in 11.5 days
ppb
an even smaller concentration measurement is parts per billion (ppb). One ppb is one part in 1 billion.
MD One drop of ink on one of the largest tanker trucks used to haul gasoline would be an ink concentration of 1ppb.
proclivity
a tendency to choose or do something regularly; an inclination or predisposition toward a particular thing: a proclivity for hard work.
“None of these issues, Reichert said, ‘seemed to affect people in the way that they approached farmed salmon and wild salmon or their proclivity to buy one or the other.’ “ (52)
trophic level
each of several hierarchical levels in an ecosystem, comprising organisms that share the same function in the food chain and the same nutritional relationship to the primary sources of energy.
“This near microdiet is one or more ‘trophic levels’ below the fish-derived pellets that are typically fed to farmed salmon.”
