Fishing News
Cod "Fingerprinting" May Aid Conservation
Bijal P. Trivedi
Researchers have developed a way to "fingerprint" cod.
The technique, essentially a genetic identification tag, enables researchers to determine a specific cod's place of origin, which could be particularly useful in enforcing international fishing quotas and catching poachers.
Until now there have been no means for determining where cod have been caught once they end up at the fish market.
A team led by Einar Nielsen of the Danish Institute for Fisheries Research identified genetic markers--unique regions of DNA--which the researchers are using to distinguish whether individual cod come from the northeastern Arctic Ocean, the North Sea, or the Baltic Sea. These three cod populations are thought to be at dangerously low levels, and fishing of them is tightly regulated.
The three populations are so different that as few as two or three fish "can provide an unambiguous conclusion about the origin of the sample," Nielsen and his colleagues wrote in a scientific report published in the September 20 issue of the journal Nature.
Click Here for Full Story
|
