![]() What started with monks honoring Buddha with simple paper red lanterns lighted with candles has, since the advent of LEDs and Asian economic success, morphed into something that in Taiwan challenges the Rose Bowl parade. All across Asia, and indeed anywhere in the world where there are Asian communities, there are Lantern Festivals and parades of lanterns. For Lunar New Year, however, it is also good.Īlthough the formal holiday ends after a week or so, 12 days later there is another festival that marks the end to this holiday season, the first full moon, and the occasion for the Lantern Festival. And just like Thanksgiving, food is plentiful. Flowers are often fake, especially peach blossoms. Opening it is bad luck, so the money is only symbolic, which, when you think of it, is true of real money too. Major rail transportation is excellent for the first few hundred miles, but for millions of travelers – the population is 1.3 billion – the last part involves buses, taxis, bicycles and walking.īecause it is a family holiday, like Thanksgiving, few outsiders see the traditions, one of which is a red envelop with money inside. Houses are decked out in red and gold, flowers are set out – the holiday celebrates spring, and even if spring has not yet arrived, fake flowers are plentiful and cyclamen is reliable – and millions of people move from industrialized cities back to rural area. When it comes time for the annual Lunar New Year, or Golden Festival, or Spring Festival, however the People’s Republic of China defines it, the event encompasses not only that actual date of the New Year, February 5, but weeks of travel before and after, and some time in between, to see relatives. "How do we manage them properly if we're not able to count them properly? If you start tapping into that resource is it a good idea? More research needs to be done.China is slightly smaller than the entire United States, but has the largest population of any country on earth. The trouble is, said Geoffroy, without knowing the biomass of lantern fish, a commercial fishery could present risks to the species itself and its predators. "Think about it - it's one of the last stocks that is not exploited and it's probably the most abundant, so it would be really surprising that there would not be projects, at least in the future, to see if it could be exploited." said Geoffroy. Geoffroy said there are also pilot studies underway in Norway to explore using lantern fish protein as feed for farmed salmon in the aquaculture industry.Ĭurrently, there is no commercial fishery in Canada for lantern fish, but Geoffroy said it could be on the horizon. The fish contain a lot of wax, so harvesters in the Gulf of Oman and Southern Africa sell their catch for use in the cosmetics industry. There are only a few places in the world where there is a commercial fishery for lantern fish. So they are not just important for the predators, but also for the climate and to help us cope with our increase in CO2," said Geoffroy. "By descending at great depths … they go and eject fecal pellets at depth during the daytime. So that's one hint that it's probably a reaction to predation or to fear.… The bioluminescence is being used to camouflage so their predators have trouble seeing them," said Geoffroy. "We know they produce light when they are stressed. ![]() The fish might be communicating with each other to signal danger lurking in the depths, he said. John's, the reasons are not fully understood. ![]() In this twilight zone, there's very little light - less than one per cent of the light at the water's surface - but not complete blackness.īut why do lantern fish light up? According to Maxime Geoffroy, a fisheries researcher scientist at the Marine Institute in St. Lantern fish are mesopelagic, meaning they live between 200 and 1,000 below the water's surface. The same way fireflies glow on land, lantern fish can glow underwater, an effect called bioluminescence. ![]() Way down in a spooky part of the ocean called the twilight zone lives the lantern fish.Īptly named, this flashy fish emits its own light lantern fish have organs on their bodies, called photophores, that produce a molecule called luciferin that, when combined with oxygen, makes a blue-green light. (Submitted by Eugenie Jacobsen - image credit) Glacier lantern fish, or benthosema glaciale, are the most common lantern fish in the waters off Newfoundland and Labrador.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |