Artist James Prosek uses fish as inspiration for his work.

Prosek, who has also written 13 books, told stories at a Saturday lecture at SUNY-ESF of when he was 9 years old and trespassing rivers to fish. Though his youth involved catching and releasing 30 fish to take a picture, Prosek said he now prefers to catch one and eat it.

About 100 people attended the most recent installment of the SUNY-ESF Dale L. Travis Public Lecture Series, which focused on the future of fisheries. The lecture, entitled “The Future of Fisheries: Choices, Decisions, and the Role of the Arts,” featured five speakers: Karin Limburg, John Waldman, Prosek, David Doubilet and Jennifer Hayes.

During the lecture, Swedish folk music played in the background.

The music tied into Limburg’s discussion about fish hook experiments in Gotland, Sweden. Limburg was the first of five speakers during the lecture, which took place in Marshall Hall on the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry campus.

The talk opened with a traditional  reading and translation by a Haudenosaunee representative. The excerpt concluded with, “Now our minds are one.”

In addition to discussing her fish hook experiments, Limburg spoke in depth about her study of otoliths, which are chronometers in the ear of a fish that show its precise age and chemical makeup.

Limburg said otoliths can show the precise ages of even a fish from the Stone Ages in a tree-ring-like way. Limburg said she was fascinated with amounts of different elements in each uniquely shaped otolith.

She also explained the drastic drop in number of Baltic Sea cod from the Neolithic period to now. There is only a small place within the Baltic Sea that cod can live due to over-fertilization and dead-zones in other areas, she said.

Limburg ended her part of the lecture by speaking about the “natural beauty of chemicality in otoliths” and the urge for conservation of Baltic cod.

John Waldman, an aquatic conservation biologist and professor of biology at Queens College, spoke next about a variety of books on fish as well as his book, “Running Silver.”

Inspired by Henry David Thoreau and conservation classics such as “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers,” Waldman focused on the plea for conservation of Shad and Atlantic Riverfish.

Waldman spoke of one specific example on the Amoskeag passage in New Hampshire, where there is an underground windowed aquarium to see the passage of fish. Though there were windows, there were no fish to observe.

“It’s really rather pathetic,” Waldman said.

The last two speakers, David Doubilet and Jennifer Hayes, spoke together as a married couple and a journalistic duo. As a team photographing aquatic spreads for National Geographic, Doubilet and Hayes spend almost every hour together, and many of those hours are spent underwater.

The two travel to countries, including Denmark, Indonesia and the Bahamas, for stories on eel conservation and great white shark protection, among other issues.

The pair said they believe that the arts can make a difference on conservation.

“Images have the power to honor, humiliate, celebrate and educate,” Hayes said.

 

Published on November 1, 2015 at 9:58 pm

Contact Anjani: asiman@syr.edu