MeatEater, Inc. is an outdoor lifestyle company founded by renowned writer and TV personality Steven Rinella. Host of the Netflix show MeatEater and The MeatEater Podcast, Rinella has gained wide popularity with hunters and non-hunters alike through his passion for outdoor adventure and wild foods, as well as his strong commitment to conservation. Founded with the belief that a deeper understanding of the natural world enriches all of our lives, MeatEater, Inc. brings together leading influencers in the outdoor space to create premium content experiences and unique apparel and equipment. MeatEater, Inc. is based in Bozeman, MT.

Cal Of The Wild

Ep. 47: Updates, Wet Markets, and Trans-Ocean Turtles

Ryan Callaghan with yellow Labrador, 'CAL OF THE WILD' title and side 'PODCAST MEATEATER NETWORK'

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17m

This week,Caltalks about the benefits of lap swim, new shark species, wet markets, barbels not barbells, and so much more.

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00:00:09 Speaker 1: From Mediators World News headquarters in Bozeman, Montana. This is Kel's we Can review with Ryan kel Kell in now Here's Kel. A loggerhead sea turtle maybe the first ever recorded sea turtle to swim from Cape Town, South Africa to the Pilbara coast of Australia, a distance of almost twenty three thousand miles. Loggerhead sea turtles have what is called a cosmopolitan distribution, meaning they live just about anywhere suitable temperatures exist, but the females only lay eggs at select nesting sites. For example, it is suspected that of the America's loggerhead population nest in Japan, one turtle was tracked making that trip from Mexico, a distance of about nine thousand miles, which at the time was the only cross ocean basin journey of any marine mammal on record. Not to play this admittedly amazing journey down, but adult loggerheads spend their lives submerged. They're capable of holding their breath for over four hours. They literally travel the world on ocean currents. So as per usual, when you hear the words only recorded in regards to animal research, need to keep in mind the animal or animals are the only ones that a person or persons have recorded doing something. There could be a whole pile of those same animals making the same journey that people just haven't recorded. This particular story is a little different, though, which is why I think this new loggerhead journey by a turtle named Yoshi is such a cool story. No, I do not like the naming of wildlife, but stick with me on this one. Yoshi was found by a Japanese fishing boat as a small juvenile with a broken carapace that's a fancy name for shell and delivered to the Two Oceans Aquarium in Cape Town. Yoshi did well in the aquarium, eventually growing to almost four hundred pounds by the time she hit her suspected breeding years. Loggerhead turtles may not hit sexual maturity until seventeen, and in some cases not until thirty plus years of age. That seems very modern human depending on the context of the word maturity, or until you take into account their total life expectancy is only about sixty years of age and the fact that the female will only lay for about three years at a time before going into a kind of reproductive rest or recharge for several more years. Sometimes as long as seven seems like time is a wasting But then I think we can all agree a little rest is warranted when each female is potentially birthing a hundred and forty eggs every time she hits the beach, Give me all the begs you have. But back to Yoshi. The team at Two Oceans Aquarium in Cape Town had to make a tough decision to release the first turtle that had essentially raised at the aquarium. For the majority of Yoshi's life, she had known captivity. They could potentially be releasing this turtle straight to its death. Death could come in any number of ways. The turtle could never have imagined growing up in the safety of an aquarium. All Two Oceans could do was make sure she was in swimming shape. They accomplished this by training her to swim in between two divers at either end of the twenty meter aquarium lap swim, so to speak. Eventually, they outfitted her with a GPS unit and transported her thirty miles off the coast of Cape Town and set her free. Keeping in mind, they had no idea of her origin outside of the Japanese fishing boat. So is anyone's guess where she would end up? And I am sure there were a few guesses that the GPS transmissions would just end. But in two years the female logger had named Yoshi, made her way as far as we know, unscathed and astonishing twenty three thousand miles. That's thirty seven million, fourteen thousand, nine hundred and twelve meters or one million, eight hundred and fifty thousand, seven hundred and forty five point six laps of the Two Oceans Aquarium pool where she grew up. She did this minus all the learned skills of time in the wild, only instinct, probably a lot of luck, and a whole lot of lap swim. Keep that in mind, kids. This week we've got COVID nineteen no big surprise, their new sharks updates, the Land and Water Conservation Fund, and so much more. But first I'm gonna tell you about my week. All sorts of new and interesting things are happening. As everyone knows, we watched a new disease grow and spread from a wet market in wu Han, China. The legal trade of wildlife includes the capture of wild animals as well as the breeding of a wide variety of animals to be sold at market, right alongside illegal wildlife that has mixed in amongst the domestic, exotic, sometimes captured, sometimes homegrown animals on display. In these wet markets. The live animals are stacked on top of each other in their cages, facilitating a cocktail of bacteria in the easy transfer of viruses such as stars such as swine flew and now such as COVID nineteen. We've had many ups and downs with wildlife here in the United States, and we are likely to have many more. One move that seems like a winner currently is the prevention of the sale and trade of wildlife meat eaters own. Patrick Durkin just wrote the follow up article to the story of Steve Porter, the Minnesota deer farmer who broke a travel ban imposed by the Minnesota Department and Natural Resources when a case of c w D, a disease that is transmitted through prions affecting the brain nervous system and is fatal, was found at a farm over two hundred miles away. The state Department of Natural Resources imposed the shipping restrictions on captive serveds in order to mid a gate the potential spread of the disease while they investigated the possible comings and goings of deer from that facility with the known case. Now, it is very important to note that c w D is not a bacteria or a virus. It is in its own special category of sponge of form and cephalopathes again transmitted through the passing of prions found in mucus fecal matter, most likely passed during close contact. There are no known cases of c w D jumping to humans. I think Pat Durkin did a fantastic bit of journalism here. Please go follow up for the whole story at the meat eater dot com. But let's focus on the good stuff. We're working from home. The Meat Eater office is traditionally a petrie dish, where if someone sneezes in one end of the building, somebody else is blowing their nose at the other. Some steps to mitigate the spread of this disease seem way over the top for those of us in the low risk category, But let me tell you. I have a ninety one year old grandmother with one long She's on oxygen full time and is squarely in the high risk segment of our population. She loves to be outside in her garden, and she just told me that she wants to get back out fly fishing this summer. And that is why her health matters to you, You calloused and selfish individuals. Not only are we talking about someone who provides habitat for our pollinators, we're talking about a licensed angler here. So do your part to keep granny fishing. Wash your hands and keep that social distance up. In other news, we have two very big announcements coming up, only one of which I'm going to tell you about. This week. Cal's We Can Review Field reports are hitting the Meat Eater YouTube channel, So go right now and subscribe to our YouTube channel. That way you'll know exactly when the episodes dropped. We're also going to release some other fun content to go along with it, things that should get you thinking. You will get to see look the commercial and recreational carp Fishery and Tennis, see the Zoom Want Prairie Preserve, and you'll get to join Eric Siegfried of on x Maps and myself as we check out some hard to reach public land that should motivate you to get outside. So once again, subscribe to the Meat eat or YouTube channel. Take a picture of you in your Cow's Weekend Review hat or shirt with one of the episodes on whatever device. Email me at ask Cal at the meat Eater dot com, or shoot me a message on the old Cow four oh six Instagram handle and I'll select a few of you for a box meat eat or spices or something else equally is awesome. Another thing to be looking out for is uh. I've been doing a lot of cutting, as you know, with my favorite steel battery power and saw, and i have not been doing a lot of maintenance. So I'm gonna be posting up a quick and dirty how to sharpen your chainsaw chain. Look out for that one as well. Over to the bug desk. A recent study published in the journal Nature and Ecology has found that in ards to the cow peeweevil, which is a small beetle, that increased sexual competition actually leads to a higher rate of genetic mutations and offspring, whereas in areas where the cow peeweevil has little to no competition for reproduction, there is little to no genetic mutations in the offspring, meaning that when many males compete for one female, in this case, competing for the ability to breed than a male sperm has to compete with other male sperm to fertilize the female's eggs, there is a higher likelihood that there will be some sort of variation from the norm in the offspring produced. Remove the competition, and the odds of producing offspring that lack genetic mutation goes way down. So now you can kind of think, wow, competition is a bad thing to put in human terms as we like to do. You can potentially decrease the risk of having an abnormal baby if you find the mate that is, uh, the easiest, lacks others attention him. Is what I'm trying to say. If you were to select the most sought after mate, the one that seems all the girls or guys fawn after, you could if you are cow peeweevil, that is run the risk of having a child that has something a little different going on. Could be good, could be bad. But here is the other thing they found after playing this study out, eventually the high competition group, over the course of many many generations, found its plateau. The competition led to many genetic mutations, but those mutations eventually led to a much higher rate of production of healthier individuals kind of been doing it the easy way or doing it the hard way sort of thing. You may not want to consider that without those genetic mutations and variations, the cow pee weevil may have just stayed a calf pee weevil. Quick side here. If you are ever in the Colorado Springs area, look up the bug Museum. I've been there with my family, I've been there with friends. I've even taken a date there once. It does not disappoint possibly and please check and use precautions. If you're doing some homeschooling. Due to our collective mitigation of the spread of COVID nineteen, you could possibly arrange a private tour. If not, keep it on your list. If it were here in Bozeman, Montana, I would be there at least once a month. Moving onto the new critter desk. As you know by now, I love the fact that we still have new species to discover. It is a real bright spot in my day. So here's the latest. Saw Sharks live in the three major oceans, Atlantic, Pacific, in Indian but the majority of saw sharks seemed to be concentrated in the Western Pacific Ocean. It is there that a research team looking at the effects of fisheries off of the coast of Zanzibar and Madagascar discovered the two new species. I'm just gonna stop and say I love this already for my money, There's nothing better than discovering new species, unless you are discovering them off the Zan's Bar and Madagascar coast. Just has an old tiny sense of discovery and adventure to it right anyway. These two new saw shark species each sport two very dignified looking whiskers called barbles that help them comb the murky depths for food. They also have the long snouts lined with razor sharp teeth that vary in size, giving it a saw like appearance. Just like the other saw sharks. It is presumed that the saw for these newcomers to the group is used to literally cut up oversized prey by whipping their heads back and forth, cutting prey into bite sized pieces. Where these two new species differ is they have six gill slits instead of the standard five, lumping them in with only one other known six guild saw shark. Very cool stuff. Like all of our sharks and rays, different fisheries have different problems, and these two may already be in hot water, so to speak. Another thing that makes these six guild sharks interesting is that they will hang at much shallower depths than the other known typically very deep living saw sharks, making them vulnerable to incidental catch in this area. So maybe if you shine a little light on our two newest known six guild sharks, definitely look them up. The pictures, especially from underneath, are fantastic and spread the word. Perhaps a little more appreciation will help conserve them. It does help sometimes, moving on, but staying in the water. A fly fishing guide and captain jose Yukon guided a client onto a permit, which is angler cot and the captain tagged. A permit is a member of the jack family and a highly sought after sport. Fish Catching one is one of the top ways fly anglers like to measure themselves against other fly anglers. This captain put a dart tag on the permit and released it back into Mexico's famous Ascension Bay. Typically, permit populations tend to stick around certain areas, but as with any species, you get your free rambling types. This past January, that same permit ended up on another captain's boat, this time in belizees Ambergs K about four miles away. The Bone Fish and Type and Trust, a nonprofit that is put in an incredible amount of cash and advocacy work for these species, are funding the research to track permit movements. This particular case shows a permit moving from one protected area to another. In order to do this, the permit traveled through areas where people still keep them for food, both for personal consumption and profit, bringing up the question are there protected areas big enough right now? Many areas of protection for species salt fresh land dwelling are on a voluntary basis, where individuals within an area a k A beach, a region, a mountain, a state will regulate the legality of take. In the case of a big tasty permit, I would like to think that the possibility of a middle ground exists here. They don't need to be reserved solely for catching release tourism, and they don't need to be over fished to death to fulfill demand at the market. Check out the Bone Fish and Type and Trust for more information. Moving over to the Land and Access Desk, many of you have written in and asked about the Great American Outdoors Act that mega once in a lifetime opportunity to help our public lands, parks, blm U S Forest Service and fund access programs, and ease months through the Land and Water Conservation Fund. In short, it warms my heart. Thank you very much. The Act still lives. Please do not be afraid to call right now your congressional representatives and tell them to support this bipartisan both sides of the Aisle legislation. Many state parks and refuges have closed in order to remove employees from the risk of contracting and spreading COVID nineteen. This seems so counterintuitive to see places like this close when I certainly feel we need them most. But here's the deal. Park visitors and refuge visitors and National forest visitors have proven that we want empty garbage cans and clean bathrooms. We want maintained trails, paths and signage. It takes people and money to do that. As of this recording, many national parks are open and free of charge. Don't mess this up. Get out, get some social distance, but don't be afraid to pick up trash if you see it. Don't steal the darned TP out of the restrooms. Be kind and courteous, to your fellow park goers, as we need everyone to take some ownership of these places. We need them now more than ever. Before you go, make a self imposed park entrance fee of a single phone call until you're duly elected to not settle for anything less than the full package and passage of the Great American Outdoors Act. If they are not a co sponsor, tell them to get on board. That's all I've got for you this week. Believe me, I have so much more to tell you. If you have anything for me, right in to ask Cal. That's a s k C a L at the meat eater dot com. If you're loving what you're hearing, tell a friend or three, and be sure to leave me a review by hitting that furthest right hand start thanks again, and I'll talk to you next week

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