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<DIV class=headline>ARCHAEOLOGY</DIV>
<DIV class=headline>Volume 65 Number 1</DIV>
<DIV class=headline><A class=black href="http://www.archaeology.org/1201/"><FONT
color=#000000>January/February 2012</FONT></A> </DIV>
<DIV class=headline> </DIV>
<DIV class=headline><FONT size=4>The Incredible Shrinking Grouper</FONT> </DIV>
<DIV class=date>by Samir S. Patel </DIV>
<DIV class=date><A
href="http://www.archaeology.org/1201/trenches/mediterranean_grouper_bardo_museum_tunis.html">http://www.archaeology.org/1201/trenches/mediterranean_grouper_bardo_museum_tunis.html</A></DIV>
<P class=floatleft300><IMG id=id7771033440762265 class=PopBoxImageSmall
onclick="Pop(this,50,'PopBoxImageLarge');" alt=grouper
src="http://www.archaeology.org/1201/trenches/images/grouper.gif"
pbsrc="images/grouper.jpg" pbCaption="Photo: Egidio Trainito"><BR><BR>(Egidio
Trainito) </P>
<P>Fish in the Mediterranean aren’t what they used to be. Commercial and
recreational fishing have decreased population sizes and also made individuals
smaller, since big fish are kept and smaller ones thrown back. To determine
whether protected, no-catch areas boost fish size and density, scientists from
the University of Salento in Lecce, Italy, and Stanford University have to
understand what fish populations were like in the past. They found a key source
in classical mosaics (along with bones and paintings), many of which are
detailed enough to identify fish, such as the dusky grouper, by species. Some
mosaics depicting these groupers show them being fished from shallow water,
whereas today they are found deeper. Other depictions, such as this one from the
Bardo Museum in Tunis, indicate that the fish were much, much larger—big enough
to swallow a fisherman whole. It may be an exaggeration, but it certainly
depicts an animal much bigger than today’s two-foot-long average. The scientists
have found bigger groupers in protected areas, but populations outside the
no-catch zones aren’t recovering in the same way. Are the days of man-sized
groupers in shallow waters gone forever? According to Paolo Guidetti of Salento,
“My impression and experience is that if we give nature a chance to recover,
nature does!”</P></FONT></DIV><BR>
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