[CINC] Researcher tracks Hawaiian fish through old menus

[thusone at aol.com]

What a way to research!    
   Shirley

Researcher tracks Hawaiian fish history through old menus 
Published: Friday, August 9, 2013 
A National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientist is using old menus from Hawaii to learn more about the fish that dwelt in the state's waters long ago.
Originally, Kyle Van Houtan had wanted to study sea turtles in Hawaii. He collected 500 menus to figure out if they were once served as a local dish.
But he made a different discovery. Fish that lived close to the shore, such as snapper, flounder and grouper, disappeared from the menus after World War II.
Van Houtan had inadvertently found a way to track the history of local fisheries through the menus, something that couldn't be done before because Hawaii didn't track the numbers until 1950.
"These are very desirable fish," he said. "They used to be on the menus. We see them on there in the 1930s and 1940s, but they're not in any of the menus today." s In their place were bottom-feeding and reef-dwelling fish. And another 20 years later, deep ocean fish, such as tuna and swordfish, were offered up as courses (Christopher Joyce, NPR, Aug. 9). -- JE
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://www.rain.org/pipermail/channel_islands_naturalist_corps/attachments/20130811/164a09fe/attachment-0001.html>