Uncovering sex-change secrets of black sea bass
Recently I was doing a bit of research for an upcoming blog post, yes I really do research some of my posts not everything is spontaneous, and Google returned a rather unexpected result. I was searching for information on a proposition up for vote in the Pennsylvania state legislature this year that deals with tax exemptions and children but what I got as a result was a story titled “Uncovering sex-change secrets of black sea bass” so of course I just had to take a look right?
According to an assistant professor at the University of New Hampshire campus, one David Berlinsky,
“In the wild, black sea bass are born as females and turn into males at around two to five years old,” Berlinsky explains. “When you bring them into captivity, they change into males more quickly.” Some captive-born fish emerge as males even before reaching adulthood, devoting energy toward reproductive development and away from growth. Such problems make breeding and growing the fish in captivity a tricky proposition.”
Ok so I see how it ended up on my Google results but still …
It seems that while this sex change thing is good for the sea bass, after all we know it takes two to tango as they say and even though science has really advanced, we have not figured out how to make babies without both parts of the equation, in captivity it causes a bit of problems. You see in captivity more of the fish change into males than in the wild so they end up with too many males and not enough females to produce more offspring.
What really caught my attention though was this last little bit
With funding from NH Sea Grant, Berlinsky has teamed with Nardi and GreatBay Aquaculture to study what triggers sex reversal in black sea bass and how to prevent it.
Ok I am all for researching better ways to do things but really is this the best way people can think of to spend research money? There is obviously a reason this happens, why does it have to be something that needs to be fixed? It seems that dedicating money towards cancer or AIDS research would be a better idea. After all I would bet that if you asked those black sea bass connoisseurs if they would rather have a ready supply of fish or a healthy partner they would pretty much agree to the later. In most cases.