Charles Robert Darwin, FRS (12 February 1809 - 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestors, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection. Darwin published his theory with compelling evidence for evolution in his 1859 book On the Origin of Species, overcoming scientific rejection of earlier concepts of transmutation of species. By the 1870s the scientific community and much of the general public had accepted evolution as a fact. However, many favoured competing explanations and it was not until the emergence of the modern evolutionary synthesis from the 1930s to the 1950s that a broad consensus developed in which natural selection was the basic mechanism of evolution. In modified form, Darwin's scientific discovery is the unifying theory of the life sciences, explaining thediversity of life. -wikipedia

The book is a combination of all the things pertaining to my fishing for so many years. It is how I got started, what I learned, who I met, what I caught, what interesting things happened. I am not through learning or enjoying my life doing this. There is always something new tomorrow.

The pictures are of the people that I knew, myself, odd things we caught, or odd things that happened.

This is a new release of the original 1961 edition.

Mercury (Hg) is a globally distributed pollutant that poses considerable risks to human and wildlife health. Over the past 150 years since the advent of the industrial revolution, approximately 80 percent of global emissions have come from anthropogenic sources, largely fossil fuel combustion. As a result, atmospheric deposition of Hg has increased by up to 4-fold above pre-industrial times. Because of their isolation, remote high-elevation lakes represent unique environments for evaluating the bioaccumulation of atmospherically deposited Hg through freshwater food webs, as well as for evaluating the relative importance of Hg loading versus landscape influences on Hg bioaccumulation.

Beginning life in the Sargasso Sea, the eel travels across the ocean, lives for twenty or so years, and then is driven by some instinct back across the ocean to spawn and die. And the next generation starts the story again. No one knows why the eels return, or how the orphaned elvers learn their way back. One man discovered, after many adventures, the breeding ground of all eels ? and he is the hero of this book.

Eels were being caught and consumed 5000 years before the birth of Christ ? Aristotle and Pliny wrote about them; Romans regarded them as a peerless delicacy; Egyptians accorded them semi-sacred status; English kings died of overeating them. There are many strange practices among eel fishers all over the world, and many great fortunes based upon the eel harvest.

The Book of Eels, a combination of social comment, biography and natural history, is also a fascinating and witty account of Tom Fort?s obsession with the eel, his journeying to discover the eel in all its habitats, and the people he meets in his pursuit.

Davidson Seamount is one of the largest seamounts in U.S. waters and the first to be characterized as a "seamount." In 2002 and 2006, the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary (MBNMS) led two multi-institutional expeditions to characterize the geology and natural history of Davidson Seamount. Results from these expeditions to Davidson Seamount are adding to the scientific knowledge of seamounts, including the discovery of new species. In November 2008, the MBNMS boundary was expanded to include the Davidson Seamount.

This document is the revised final management plan and environmental assessment for the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary. The plan's primary goal is the protection of sanctuary resources, including the conservation of marine biodiversity within the sanctuary. The attendant sub-goals include protecting the sanctuary's ecological integrity while ensuring sustained provision of the sanctuary's environmental services. Befitting sanctuary status, the plan advocates a standard for conservation that is higher than may apply broadly throughout the whole Gulf of Maine.

A book that covers the waters of the New Jersey-New York harbor estuary system and the common fish and wildlife that you will encounter in the area. With 30 fish species and over 20 other wildlife species, this book is a must for anyone wanting to know more about the fish and wildlife of the New York metropolitan area. Over 80 photos make identification of fish and wildlife a breeze.

The Monitor National Marine Sanctuary (MNMS) was the nation's first sanctuary, originally established in 1975 to protect the famous civil war ironclad shipwreck, the USS Monitor. Since 2008, sanctuary sponsored archeological research has branched out to include historically significant U-boats and World War II shipwrecks within the larger Graveyard of the Atlantic off the coast of North Carolina. These shipwrecks are not only important for their cultural value, but also as habitat for a wide diversity of fishes, invertebrates and algal species. Additionally, due to their unique location within an important area for biological productivity, the sanctuary and other culturally valuable shipwrecks within the Graveyard of the Atlantic are potential sites for examining community change.

This report describes cases relating to the management of national marine sanctuaries in which certain scientific information was required so managers could make decisions that effectively protected trust resources. The cases presented represent only a fraction of difficult issues that marine sanctuary managers deal with daily. They include, among others, problems related to wildlife disturbance, vessel routing, marine reserve placement, watershed management, oil spill response, and habitat restoration. Scientific approaches to address these problems vary significantly, and include literature surveys, data mining, field studies (monitoring, mapping, observations, and measurement), geospatial and biogeographic analysis, and modeling.

The coastal ecosystem of South Florida is comprised of distinct marine environments. Circulation of surface waters and exchange processes, which respond to both local and regional forcings, interconnect different coastal environments. In addition, re-circulating current systems within the South Florida coastal ecosystem such as the Tortugas Gyre contribute to retention of locally spawned larvae.

Gray's Reef National Marine Sanctuary (GRNMS) (Figure 1) is managed by the National Marine Sanctuary Program, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), part of the U.S. Department of Commerce. This Final Management Plan (FMP) is designed to replace the 1983 GRNMS management plan, as management strategies have been updated and revised to address current and priority resource issues. The strategies within this revised plan address impacts from human activities, such as anchoring, diving, marine debris, and fishing, as well as administration, research, exploration, evaluation, and education needs.

From May 22 to June 4, 2006, NOAA scientists led a research cruise using the ROPOS Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) to conduct a series of dives at targeted sites in the Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary (OCNMS) with the goal of documenting deep coral and sponge communities.

"North Florida Reefs" offers a look into the underwater world and the spectacular marine creatures found offshore the coast of Jacksonville and St. Augustine. It is an absolute must have guide for fishermen, scuba divers, and marine wildlife enthusiasts. Readers are provided GPS coordinates and underwater imagery of several reefs in the region. Each reef page includes a firsthand description of the underwater destination and insights from marine conservationist Joe Kistel. Detailed images and descriptions of fish and invertebrate species are displayed in the marine life section. Readers are not only presented with spectacular imagery but are also informed where the images were captured. "North Florida Reefs" has opened the doors to the region's best kept environmental destination secret.

This is a new release of the original 1946 edition.

The vital sign selection process of the NPS Inventory and Monitoring Program (I&M) identified fish, macroinvertebrates, and physical habitat characteristics as a critical need for the parks of the National Capital Region Network (NCRN). In 2005, the National Capital Region Inventory and Monitoring Network (NCRN) initiated a long-term water quality and quantity monitoring program, funded in part by the National Park Service Water Resources Division. The Biological monitoring portion of the program is carried out every 6 years at 37 sites within 10 of the NCRN parks. The data collected using this protocol will provide much needed baseline information on the stream biological resources in the NCRN, particularly in terms of community structure and composition. The information will also be used to determine long term trends in community composition, as well as trends in the abundance and distribution of individual species.

This report presents a summary of the forest monitoring data collected in 2009 by the National Capital Region Network Inventory and Monitoring Program. The data collected is used for reporting on three vital signs: forest condition, exotic invasive plant species, and forest pests and diseases. Monitoring was conducted on 100 forest plots randomly located throughout the parks in the National Capital Region Network. This data is part of a long term forest monitoring effort that includes 400 forest plots. One hundred plots are monitored each year, and any particular plot will be monitored once every four years. As this is the first time that this particular set of one hundred plots has been monitored, only status data is available. Trend data will become available once repeat monitoring of the plots begins.

The National Capital Region Network (NCRN) Inventory and Monitoring (I&M) Program has identified amphibians as a priority taxonomic group for its monitoring program. The goals of this program are to document at least 90% of the amphibian species in its parks, and to determine whether the integrity and status of amphibian populations are changing over time. As of 2004, all NCRN parks had completed amphibian inventories (Shawn Carter, National Park Service, personal communication), and planning for monitoring efforts were initiated. The objectives of the monitoring program are to implement a long-term sampling design, in cooperation with park service biologists and managers, to: (1) describe the annual distribution of amphibians (i.e. estimate initial occupancy probabilities for targeted species) and explore factors that may influence occupancy probabilities or distributional patterns, (2) determine if amphibian distributions are changing annually, and if so, explore whether occupancy changes are related to habitat quality, paying special attention to factors associated with increased urbanization in the region, and (3) provide information to aid in generating and testing hypotheses that differentiate among possible causes of long-term changes in the proportion of area occupied among species, habitats, and park areas.