CAPELIN IS A SMALL FISH but larger than an Anchovie. It is of considerable importance to the Fishery of this Country. What I have to say of Capelin is of so strange a nature that I am very much afraid you will doubt my veracity.
— From The Newfoundland Journal of Aaron Thomas, able seaman in H.M.S. Boston, 1794-95
SUMMER DOESN’T START in Newfoundland and Labrador, so they say, until the capelin roll. Only once thousands of fingerling fish start tossing themselves en masse onto the province’s beaches to spawn will the skies clear and the rain abate as the season shifts over, one to the next. Or as the St. John’s novelist Edward Riche says of the capelin: “My experience is that summer weather will not arrive in Newfoundland until they have completed their piscine orgy.”
Whether or not they can trigger seasons (spoiler alert: they can’t), the tiny species that science knows as Mallotus villosus is, in the parlance, a focal forage fish. That’s another way of saying they’re high in fat and rich in energy — very nutritious (and that everything eats them) seals, whales, seabirds, other bigger fish.
Dallying down near the bottom of the food chain, capelin don’t exactly dominate the popular imagination.
And yet their significance to the balance of the northwest Atlantic’s marine ecosystem is hard to overstate. While cod sustained the Newfoundland economy and way of life for centuries, it was the capelin they were devouring that brought them inshore by shoal upon teeming shoal.
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة November-December 2019 من Canadian Geographic.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 8500 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك ? تسجيل الدخول
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة November-December 2019 من Canadian Geographic.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 8500 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك? تسجيل الدخول
ANIMAL XING
THIS PAST SUMMER AN AMBITIOUS WILDLIFE UNDER/OVERPASS SYSTEM BROKE GROUND IN B.C. ON A DEADLY STRETCH OF HIGHWAY JUST WEST OF THE ALBERTA BORDER. HERE’S HOW IT HAPPENED.
Unearthing a giant
Almost 30 years ago, paleontologist Elizabeth “Betsy” Nicholls made a discovery of colossal proportions
WE DID THIS
AS THE IMPACTS OF GLOBAL WARMING BECOME INCREASINGLY EVIDENT, THE CONNECTIONS TO BIODIVERSITY LOSS ARE HARD TO IGNORE. CAN THIS FALL’S TWO KEY INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCES POINT US TO A NATURE-POSITIVE FUTURE?
WILD THINGS
WILD CANADIAN GEOGRAPHIC PRESENTS THE WINNERS OF ITS ANNUAL CANADIAN WILDLIFE PHOTOGRAPHY OF THE YEAR COMPETITION
INTO THE ARCTIC
CANADIAN PAINTER AND FILMMAKER CORY TRÉPANIER EXPLORES THE SUBLIME AND RAPIDLY CHANGING CANADIAN ARCTIC
Under the ice
Until the last decade, we knew little about what lay beneath the Arctic ice. Now scientists and explorers are shedding light on this vanishing world.
Beyond the flicker of the firelight
AN EXPLORER UNRAVELS THE STORY OF AN EARLY 20TH CENTURY HAUNTING IN THE ISOLATED FOOTHILLS OF LABRADOR’S MEALY MOUNTAINS
YOUR SOCIETY
FEATURED FELLOW: RICHARD WIESE
Smother nature
IN BANFF NATIONAL PARK, ALBERTA, AS IN PROTECTED AREAS ACROSS THE COUNTRY, MANAGERS ARE STRUGGLING TO BALANCE THE DESIRE TO EXPERIENCE WILDERNESS WITH AN IMPERATIVE TO CONSERVE IT
FRESH FROM THE CITY
ALREADY GAINING STEAM BEFORE THE PANDEMIC, INTEREST IN URBAN FARMING — AND HUNGER FOR HYPER-LOCAL FOOD — HAS SOARED. A LOOK AT THREE CANADIAN TAKES ON THE URBAN FARMING PHENOMENON.
