ABORIGINAL FISHING

This story came from a friend from Alaska, I am sure that the conservationist have a hard time with this, but it is the Aboriginal way and should be respected. Nothing is wasted and it is perfectly legal. This is the way they feed their families.

It was up in Pt Barrow (furthest north city of Alaska) a couple of weeks ago when they landed 3 bow head whales. They harvested a 40 footer, a 34 footer and a 24 footer. That's a lot of sushi. They used a Cat to pull the 40 footer ashore. It weighted approximately 80,000 pounds (roughly 2,000 pounds a foot). They use heavy equipment to butcher and distribute these. This picture was on the beach about 3 hours after the first was landed. It is almost all distributed, you'll see the 4 wheelers and pickups for hauling it home where it is stacked in the front yard for the winter as it's always below freezing. They shoot any polar bears crazy enough to mess with their stash.
"Now that's fishing ;-)"

MASS MIGRATION

Looking like giant leaves floating in the sea thousands of Golden Rays are seen here gathering off the coast of Mexico.The spectacular scene was captured as the magnificent creatures made one of their biannual mass migrations to more agreeable waters. Gliding silently beneath the waves they turned vast areas of blue water to gold off the northern tip of the Yucatan Peninsula Sandra Critelli, an amateur photographer, stumbled across the phenomenon while looking for whale sharks. She said: 'It was an unreal image, very difficult to describe. The surface of the water was covered by warm and different shades of gold and looked like a bed of autumn leaves gently moved by the wind. It's hard to say exactly how many there were, but in the range of a few thousand. 'We were surrounded by them without seeing the edge of the school and we could see many under the water surface too. 'I feel very fortunate I was there in the right place at the right time to experience nature at her best.' Measuring up to 7ft (2.1 meters) from wing-tip to wing-tip, Golden rays are also more prosaically known as cow nose rays. They have long, pointed pectoral fins that separate into two lobes in front of their high-domed heads and give them a cow-like appearance.
Despite having poisonous stingers they are known to be shy and non-threatening when in large schools.
The population in the Gulf of Mexico migrates, in schools of as many as 10,000, from western Florida to the Yucatan .


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