What a catch! Giant 90-year-old fish reeled in off Alaska (AP/CNN)

[eppur_se_muova]

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) -- A commercial fishing boat hauled in what may have been one of the oldest creatures in Alaska -- a giant rockfish estimated to be about a century old.

The 44-inch, 60-pound female shortraker rockfish was caught last month by the catcher-processor Kodiak Enterprise as it trawled for pollock 2,100 feet below the surface, south of the Pribilof Islands in the Bering Sea.

The Seattle-based vessel, owned by Trident Seafoods, pulled up an estimated 75 tons of pollock and 10 bright-orange rockfish.

Scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration at the Alaska Fisheries Science Center in Seattle measured, photographed and documented the fish. They removed an ear bone, the otolith, which contains growth rings similar to rings in the trunks of trees.

They estimate the rockfish was 90 to 115 years old.


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more: http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/04/06/old.rockfish.ap/index.html

90 year old, recently DEAD rockfish on its way to the cannery.

[Ezlivin]

1. Don't you worry! We'll sweep those oceans clean of the pesky fish

I think the plan is to completely deplete fish stocks by 2010.

It's going swimmingly well so far....

[Glorfindel]

2. So sad...the current "National Geographic"

has a devastating article on this very subject. Sometimes I'm glad I'm old and won't live to see the horrors that are coming.

[Delphinus]

8. Things like this,

and the polar bears, and the species in the rainforest, etc., simply break my heart. It pains me further to think of what humanity has in store for it not too long down the road. I'd like to get off now. :cry:

[C_U_L8R]

3. And now it's dead

good going dickheads

[InvisibleTouch]

6. Sad, isn't it?

That was my first thought too. She survived for 100 years, only to be dragged up out of the ocean by some fishing boat and then stuffed and mounted. Not even caught for food, which I would be okay with. Humans are a sick species.

[grasswire]

4. Did Rev. Sun Myung Moon have it stuffed?

Trident is part of his huge monopoly on the world's fisheries. That's right -- the Moonies have monopolized the fishing industry.

[applegrove]

5. Poor fish.

[YankeyMCC]

7. Man I'm such a softy

90 to 115 years of life and it ends like this for this magnificent creature? I guess I'm a little soft or sentimental but that just doesn't seem right to me. I said the same thing a few months ago when they caught and killed that century old lobster and I made the mistake of saying as much to friends and family at a family gathering and they all thought I was crazy.

And I don't even like seafood. :shrug: