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People tossing pet fish into lakes have created monster goldfish the size of footballs

City of Burnsville/Facebook

A Minnesota city has issued a notice to residents to please stop releasing their unwanted pet goldfish into local lakes and ponds because they are turning into Frankenfish and messing with the natural order of things.

Okay, they didn't say Frankenfish, but take a look at the monstrous size of these goldfish. Not exactly the little fishbowl friends you find at the fair.

The city of Burnsville, Minnesota posted the plea on Facebook and Twitter, explaining what a recent fish survey had found in a local lake. "Large groups of goldfish have been observed in recent years on the lake. At high populations, goldfish can contribute to poor water quality by mucking up the bottom sediments and uprooting plants," the post said.

"You see goldfish in the store and they're these small little fish," Caleb Ashling, Burnsville's natural resources specialist, said in an interview, according to MSN. "When you pull a goldfish about the size of a football out of the lake, it makes you wonder how this can even be the same type of animal."

There's a common myth that goldfish will only grow to the size their enclosure allows. While there is some truth to that, according to Tropical Fish Magazine, the limited size of at-home goldfish has more to do with water quality than aquarium size. The reality is that common goldfish can grow very large in size—up to 18 inches—and their impact on ecoystems they aren't designed for can be significant.

"A few goldfish might seem to some like a harmless addition to the local water body – but they're not," wrote the Minnesota department of natural resources earlier this year.

The city of Eagan, Minnesota, has experience with the problems invasive goldfish can cause. Several. years ago, some goldfish dumped into a pond at Eagan's Central Park resulted in a population spun out of control, which muddied the waters and harmed native plants. It took three years of effort and a great deal of expense to rid the pond of the issue.

"We tried netting them out," Koehle says, "and we got thousands of them, but we couldn't get them all," said Eagan water resources specialist Jessie Koehle, according to Minnesota Conservation Volunteer magazine. Eventually, we had to use rotenone to reclaim the pond, killing all the fish and starting over."

"It can be a pain to figure out what to do with a goldfish that you don't want," Koehle said. But releasing them into a lake or pond isn't the best solution, even if it seems like the kindest one. It's also against the law to introduce fish into bodies of water where they don't naturally live.

The city of Burnsville recommended that people rehome pet fish with responsible caregivers rather than release them out into nature. That's good advice for fish owners no matter where you live. One little fish may not seem like a big deal, but when it results in an explosion of an invasive species, it can wreak havoc on ecosystems and cause real harm to other living things. If your fish didn't come directly from the pond or the lake you're looking at, don't put it there. Keep pet fish in tanks, and keep the balance of nature intact.

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How one teacher's aquarium dream made science at this Texas school 10 times cooler.

He found a beautiful way to make his school a better place to learn.

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What do you do if you're an awesome science teacher and you want your kids to learn about water animals but don't have water nearby?

That's what James Jubran was up against as an aquatic science teacher at Alief Elsik High School in Houston, Texas.

"We don’t have the ability to go to lakes, rivers, oceans or streams," Jubran explains. The nearest large body of water is Trinity Bay, which is an hour away. Big field trips like that cost money, and the school doesn't have the funding to make them feasible.

Elsik is far from being the only school with this problem. Schools nationwide are dealing with massive budget cuts to their STEM programs (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics). That's a big obstacle for students looking to have careers in any of these fields.

Thankfully aquatic science enthusiasts at Elsik have Jubran — grant writer extraordinaire.

Jubran with some of his students. All photos via Elsik High School, used with permission.

Jubran grew up in Florida surrounded by the ocean, and he was always fascinated by underwater ecosystems. He often went out on boats with his family, and he never missed an opportunity to go snorkeling or scuba diving.

He became a science teacher in Florida 10 years ago, but due to statewide school budget cuts, he lost his job and decided to move inland to Houston, Texas, in 2006. He's been at Elsik for five years but has always felt somewhat limited by the lack of access to water.

So in 2016, he wrote a grant proposal for State Farm's Neighborhood Assist Program asking for help in building a gigantic aquarium for Elsik students as well as students at other nearby schools.

State Farm accepted the first 2,000 applicants for the grant, and narrowed that number down to 200. Those proposals were then made public so that people could vote on their favorites. Elsik students made it their mission to vote as much as possible.

The top 40 proposals received $25,000. The grant Jubran wrote came in at #8.

State Farm grant dispatchers and members of the school board.

Jubran immediately began pulling resources to build his dream aquarium, and within a couple months, it was finished.

The aquariumis 12 feet long, 9 feet tall, and 3 feet wide and can hold 1,100 gallons of water.

He decided to create a tropical ecosystem in the tank, home to all kinds of tropical fish. The aquatic residents were added slowly to the tank in order to build up good bacteria, which allows the tank to better handle fish waste. The slow process also helps make sure the fish all get along.

Today, there are 14 different species of fish living in the tank. They include threadfin geophagus, known for their digging skills, Silver arowana, which can grow to two feet long, carnivorous tiger oscars, shovelnose catfish, which look like their name sounds, and Redhooks — the vegetarian version of piranhas.

A few redhooks in Elsik's new aquarium.

The tank is located in the school cafeteria so that all of the students can enjoy it and, well, because it was too big to put upstairs near Jubran's classroom.

The aquarium's been in place for two months now, and everyone seems to love it and all its colorful inhabitants.

Threadfin geophaguses hanging out together.

Students are often seen pressed up against the glass watching the fish swim around and interact with one another.

Jubran doesn't love the thousands of fingerprints on the glass, but he appreciates the enthusiasm. He even has kids he's never met before coming up to him saying things like, “oh, are you the guy who built the aquarium? It’s so cool."

I don't know about that guy in the middle. He looks pretty fishy to me. HEYO!

And Jubran's students, especially the ones interested in aquatic science careers, can't get enough. Even though it's the end of the school year, he's begun assigning special teaching projects on species in the aquarium.

"Next year, students will learn everything they need to know about the fish, then develop and present a curriculum focused on the aquarium," Jubran says. That way, when students from other schools come by to check out the aquarium, Elsik students can actually teach them about what's going on inside it.

And Jubran is not finished with his plans to bring water to Elsik — he's got even loftier plans up his sleeve.

Jubran teaching his students about the aquarium.

"I'm going for a $100,000 grant next year to build an even larger salt water aquarium for the other side of the school," Jubran says.

It might be four times as much as the previous grant, but considering his success at getting that, there's a very good chance he'll be filling a larger aquarium with more exotic fish soon enough.

Jubran's initiative just goes to show there's enormous power behind one person's desire to make a difference.

You don't have to have a ton of money or a fancy upbringing to make huge waves in your community. All you need to have is an idea and the tenacity to see it through.

One teacher can make a school a better, cooler place to learn and grow. As long as Jubran's at Elsik, he'll be working on exciting ways to do just that.

If you want to find out more about Neighborhood Assist, and how it's helping improve communities across the country, check out the program here.

This post was updated 7/11/2017.

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When wolves were reintroduced in Yellowstone, some unexpected species benefitted.

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On a quiet hike in Yellowstone National Park, some lucky visitors might get to hear an amazing sound: the howl of a gray wolf.

A wolf howling in the Lower Geyser Basin of Yellowstone National Park. Image by Jim Peaco/YellowstoneNPS.

They might even get to spot one of these beautiful animals darting across the landscape. In fact, today, the chances of seeing a wolf in some parts of this park — such as Lamar Valley — are so good that some people come just to wolf-watch.

A female wolf standing in a road near the Lamar River Bridge in Yellowstone National Park. Image by Jim Peaco/YellowstoneNPS.

But for most of the 20th century, it was impossible to view these animals at all inside the park.

In fact, it was hard to see a gray wolf anywhere in the lower 48 states. That is because ever since settlers moved west, they feared the great gray wolf. The fact that wolves started killing livestock didn’t help either.

So, starting in the late 1800s up until the 1920s, wolves were hunted and poisoned by ranchers and predator control programs in order to protect people, livestock, and other “more desirable” wildlife species. In the end, not a single breeding pair of wolves remained in Yellowstone National Park.

Soda Butte Creek in Yellowstone National Park in October 1993. Image by Jim Peaco/YellowstoneNPS.

When Yellowstone lost its wolves, it caused some big problems for the whole ecosystem.

Wolves are apex predators, which means they are at the top of the food web. When wolves were eliminated, it caused what scientists call a top-down trophic cascade. In other words, the whole ecosystem became unbalanced.

“Most ecosystems are best when they’re balanced,” Doug Smith, project leader for the Wolf Restoration Project in Yellowstone, said in a National Park Service Q&A. “Having a lot of different kinds of things at moderate numbers is better than having a lot of any one thing.”

Without wolves, there was a lot of one thing: elk. And biodiversity across the entire park declined as a result.

Two bull elk at Blacktail Deer Plateau. Image by Neal Herbert/YellowstoneNPS.

Why? Because without one of their major natural predators, fewer elk were dying. Their numbers grew so much that they ended up overgrazing large areas of land, leaving them vulnerable to erosion and defoliation.

This hurt plants and other animal species. Willow and aspen trees started dying off — and that hurt the species that relied on these trees for their survival, such as the birds that use them as nesting grounds and the beavers that use the wood to build dams and survive the winter.

The numbers of rabbits and mice species fell, too, because of all the overgrazing. They simply had fewer places to hide from predators.

Everything started to change after scientists reintroduced 41 wolves into Yellowstone National Park.

A newly arrived wolf is released from its cage into a pen in 1996. Image by Jim Peaco/YellowstoneNPS.

From 1995 to 1997, wolves were captured in Canada and northwest Montana and transported to Yellowstone. Once there, each was radio-collared and temporarily penned so biologists could make sure they were healthy.

Then they were released into the wilderness of the park.

Park rangers prepare to release a wolf into the park in 1996. image by Jim Peaco/YellowstoneNPS.

The wolves thrived in their new home.

The newly formed packs spread out and established their territories, and the large populations of elk and deer provided them with ample prey. And because they were inside the national park, the animals were protected from hunters. So their numbers grew.

The Gibbon wolf pack in Yellowstone National Park. Image via Yellowstone/NPS.

Before long, the wolves started changing Yellowstone’s ecosystem all over again, but this time for the better.

The first thing that happened was the number of large prey dropped. In 1995, Yellowstone was home to about 18,000 elk, but by 2015, that number had dropped to 4,500, helping restore the ecosystem's natural balance.

Elk on Mount Everts in Yellowstone National Park in 2014. Image by Neal Herbert/YellowstoneNPS.

Scientists think this happened, at least in part, because wolves started to change their prey’s behavior. Deer and elk started avoiding areas where they could be easily hunted, such as open valleys and gorges, which caused those areas to regenerate. Plants started growing on the riverbanks and erosion decreased, causing rivers and streams to actually change course.

Meanwhile, birds, beavers, mice, and bears started returning to those once-barren areas.

A western meadowlark in Lamar Valley in the spring of 2015. Image by Neal Herbert/YellowstoneNPS.

The landscape of the whole park transformed, and the ecosystem as a whole became healthier.

A grizzly bear and her cub. Image by Jim Peaco/YellowstoneNPS.

Because they are carnivores, wolves often get a bad rap — but the Yellowstone story shows just how important they are to our planet.

The ecosystem in Yellowstone is complex and always changing, but recent history has shown scientists and ecologists how important wolves are to keeping the natural balance. It is true that wolves hunt large animals, but they are not just killers — they also help other species thrive.

A wolf from the Canyon pack in Yellowstone. Image by Diane Renkin/NPS.

We all know the story about the “the big bad wolf.” But today, Yellowstone National Park is helping us learn a different story about wolves, and this is one is a lot happier.

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Want to know what the North Pole is really like? We asked an Arctic researcher.

Photo by Vince Gx on Unsplash

A sunny day at the Saarland Glacier near the North Pole.

When Richard Krishfield began his career fixing office equipment, he had no idea it would take him to the ends of the Earth.

Then, in 1986, Krishfield, who had spent years working on computers and electronics for businesses, was asked down to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOI) in Massachusetts to work on one of their instruments — a conductivity, temperature, and depth (or CTD) device that collects data from its seat on the ocean floor.

It wasn't the work Krishfield was used to, but it offered an intriguing promise of adventure.

"I thought well, jeez, it might be kind of fun to work on ships and travel the world for a few years," Krishfield says over the phone. 35 years later, he's still doing it.

For over 85 years, the WHOI has been at the forefront of oceanographic study and innovation. Their scientists, engineers, and innovators routinely travel around the globe — from oil spill sites to exotic coastal shores to underwater volcanoes — collecting valuable data and learning how our world works.

Krishfield's work with the WHOI has brought him to some of the world's most extreme places, including the North Pole.

Unlike the iconic images of a massive, globe-spanning, elf-employing, gift-making, reindeer-housing operation run by a jolly man in a red suit, the real North Pole is home to navigators and researchers who brave some of the coldest weather on the planet in the name of science.

Living and working at the North Pole is an intense experience that takes a physical toll on those who venture out there.

Every year, Krishfield and his team spend months at a time camping out in the Arctic, setting up advanced observation instruments that send real-time data back to the WHOI. "Basically they’re sending back what you might consider the weather of the ocean," says Krishfield. And setting them up is no easy task.

"You’re living in a tent on the ice," says Krishfield. "And you don't have things like forklifts, so you have to muscle heavy equipment on and off small airplanes." Those airplanes land on makeshift runways that are cleared out by workers, too. In order for the ice to be thick enough to land a plane on, most of the work has to happen when it's as cold as possible.

"You have to get acclimated to the minus-20 or minus-30 degree temperatures and dress appropriately and know what to do," Krishfield says.

Over his 35-year career, Krishfield has seen firsthand just how much the Arctic is changing.

"Obviously the ice is melting," he says. "And in the 30 years I’ve been going up there, it's very clear how much."

One of the instruments Krishfield has helped set up is a buoy that sits on ice floes and dangles sensors into the water below to measure temperature, salinity, and current velocity of the ocean. When he first started installing them, he and his team would look for ice floes that were up to 4 meters thick.

"Then after a couple years we were looking for 2- to 3-meter floes," says Krishfield. "Then we were looking for 1-and-ahalf to 1-meter floes, and then this last summer, we were out there, and there was hardly any thick ice at all."

Greenland, research, global warming, Arctic, human footprint

Photo taken from a plane over the Jacobshavn Glacier Front in Ilulissat, Greenland

Image via U.S. Department of State/Wikimedia Commons.

Of course, Krishfield and the scientific community have been reporting shrinking ice in the Arctic for a long time. Studies confirmed long ago that the Arctic is warming, that the ice is melting, and just how catastrophic the result of that could be for the Earth's climate and ecosystems.

If the Arctic becomes a seasonal ice cap (where ice melts during the summer and refreezes during the winter), it could throw the planet's weather systems into utter chaos. Scientists estimate that could be the case by 2050.

"Probably sooner than that," says Krishfield.

You don't need to look at satellite data to see how much the Arctic has changed, Krishfield says.

"I look back and think of all the trips we used to do back in the summertime ... it was really beautiful out there," he recalls. "It’d be bright and sunny, and it was just beautiful."

"Now that the ice has melted away quite a bit, what you end up having is very grey, dull, dreary, and sort of foggy days out there. So the whole climate of it has changed."

It's hard to imagine that human beings could have any effect on the North Pole — as far away from it as we are — but we can and we do.

Arctic sea ice loss has been directly linked to carbon emissions, and saving the Arctic is a matter of cutting down those emissions quickly and dramatically. The North Pole is so extreme and so far away that we hardly ever think about it — let alone wrestle with the true global impact of what would happen if we let it melt. Odds are, the North Pole only comes up in conversation around Christmas — and not exactly in a "lets save the Arctic ice cap" context.

If you find hope in one thing though, consider the fact that human beings really can have an impact on the Arctic, for worse — or for better. Our actions have brought the Arctic Ocean to the brink, but it's the actions we take next, along with the hard work of scientists and researchers like Krishfield, that save it.

Heroes

What everyone heartbroken over the 'Planet Earth II' turtle episode should know.

On Dec. 11, 2016, animal lovers sat in front of their TVs, devastated at what they saw on the screens in front of them.

It had to do with baby turtles.

— (@)

"Planet Earth II" — the sequel to BBC's 2006 mega-hit series "Planet Earth" — had documented Hawksbill turtle hatchlings in Barbados.

The series, which aired in the U.K. and is coming to the BBC America this January, culminated in an episode focused on how cities are affecting animal populations around the world.

The Hawksbill turtle — a critically endangered species — was one of the featured creatures. And it was really tough to watch.

— (@)

The series, narrated by Sir David Attenborough, explained what happens when these hatchlings are born.

When Hawksbill turtles hatch from their eggs at night, their immediate instinct is to go toward the brightest horizon, which — if humans didn't exist — would lead them to the sea (and safety).

This is a Hawksbill turtle hatchling, born in a Jakarta breeding center in 2010. Photo by Romeo Gacad/AFP/Getty Images.

But humans do exist. And our expanding societies have had a dramatic effect on this crucial point in the hatchlings' lives.

As cities continue to sprout up on seashores, their bright lights complicate those first few moments in a hatchling's life. Instead of being drawn toward the sea, hatchlings are drawn toward the artificial lights of the city. This isn't good.

Without human interference, Hawksbill turtles already have a small chance of surviving long-term, according to Carla Daniel, deputy field director of the Barbados Sea Turtle Project. But with this added barrier stopping them from safely reaching the ocean, baby turtles are getting "crushed in the road [or] lost forever in drains," among other not-so-happy endings, on their accidental journeys into the city.

It was a big wake-up call for many distraught "Planet Earth II" viewers.

— (@)

The outcry among upset viewers spurred responses from the Barbados Sea Turtle Project, which partnered with the BBC during production.

"We know that watching the footage on the 'Cities' episode of 'Planet Earth II' last night was emotional and heartbreaking," the group wrote on its Facebook page. "While it does portray what thousands of hatchlings face every year, we want to reassure you that we do our very best to ensure that as many hatchlings as possible are rescued and no hatchling is ever left behind!"

Baby turtles that were hatched at a conservation center in West Sumatra are released into the ocean. Photo by Adek Berry/AFP/Getty Images.

**The "Planet Earth II" team also assured viewers on Twitter that its film crew did, in fact, break protocol and saved any turtles it spotted.**

Typically, the crew does everything it can not to engage or disrupt wildlife while filming, but — because this particular tragedy was manmade — they decided to intervene.

— (@)

The hatchlings' fatal endings served as a learning moment for viewers on the unintended consequences of our modern existence as humans.

Many of our behaviors and technologies have surprising consequences to other species. Light pollution is a great example.

It doesn't just affect baby turtles, after all.

While light pollution may not seem as harmful as, say, pumping pollution into the air or cutting down huge swaths of trees, artificial lighting is responsible for millions of bird deaths each year, according to the International Dark Sky Association. Many birds use moonlight and starlight to hunt and migrate, and bright city lights can throw them off course. Birds may arrive in a new region too early or too late, for instance, and miss the climate conditions they need to survive there.

Photo by Frederic J. Brown/AFP/Getty Images.

Artificial lighting, which unintentionally draws insects, may create a "fatal attraction" between the tiny creatures and our manmade structures as well. Although insects seem like a nuisance to us, they're often the foundation of the food web in a given habitat. A decline in Insect population can affect whole ecosystems.

The artificial light problem may seem unconquerable for many devastated "Planet Earth II" viewers. But the last thing we should do is give up.

Take it from Carla Daniel.

“There are many times that everything feels kind of pointless," she explained candidly of the enormous problem of hatchling deaths. "'What's the point in doing this?' This is one of those things where we kind of all have to hold hands and come together and agree to make a difference.”

“If there was one, single thing that was necessary for change, [it's] for you to get up," she noted. "Go out of your house and do something [about it]."

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There were real hobbits and they lived on an island full of giants. Here's why.

Hobbits were real.

GIF from "The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring."

No, not those hobbits.

I'm not talking about J.R.R. Tolkien's funny, pipe-smoking, jewelry-hating race of smaller people from "Lord of the Rings" fame.

Instead, "hobbit" is the nickname scientists have given to a real but diminutive human relative, known as Homo floresiensis, that lived about 60,000 years ago on the Indonesian island of Flores.

Real-life hobbits were only about three feet tall. What made these them so small? Living on an island.

As it turns out, a lot of species change size once they start living on islands. Big gets small and small gets big. Why? It depends on each species and each island. Different amounts and types of food might be one reason (a tiny island can't support a gigantic elephant, for example). On the flip side, a lack of predators might enable small animals to grow big.

In honor of weird evolutionary changes, here are eight creatures that got really weird after moving to islands.

1. The famous hobbits, in all their glory.

A reconstruction of what a hobbit may have looked like. Image from Cicero Moraes et alii/Wikimedia Commons.

We weren't completely sure whether the hobbits really were a case of the island effect (or whether they were normal humans with an abnormality), but the recent discovery of the hobbit's ancestors suggests that they were. Their ancestors started big, but once they got to Flores, they quickly shrank to match the island's more restrictive ecosystem.

2. While humans shrank on Flores, lizards got big. Really big.

Photo from Mark Dumont/Flickr.

Hobbits would have shared the island with the gigantic Komodo dragons. These guys earn their draconic title — they can weigh as much as 300 pounds and can grow up to 10 feet long!

And these weren't the only giants on Flores. There are also giant rats and even gigantic storks.

3. Speaking of giant reptiles, the Galápagos took tortoises and said, You know what? These guys need to weigh as much as a polar bear.

Photo from Rodrigo Buendia/AFP/Getty Images.

The largest Galápagos tortoise ever seen weighed over 800 pounds.

4. Birds got in on the gigantism game too — few as enthusiastically as New Zealand's 12-foot-tall moa.

Painting by Henrich Harder/Wikimedia Commons.

Up until the 15th century, New Zealand was home to nine different species of giant, flightless birds known as moa, which were preyed upon by the also-terrifyingly large Haast's eagle. (Not to be a slouch, Madagascar, that island off Africa, also had its version of gigantic fowl: the elephant bird).

5. The Mediterranean was home to a tiny elephant — that could just about fit under your sink!

Image from Ninjatacoshell/Wikimedia Commons.

These guys were known as "dwarf elephants" or "dwarf mammoths" and were found on Mediterranean islands like Sicily and Cyprus. Unfortunately, we're about 11,000 years too late to have our own personal three-feet-tall miniature elephants, which is just more proof that linear time is awful.

6. Tiny hippos too!

Photo from Chuckupd/Wikimedia Commons.

These guys pictured above are living pygmy hippos from West Africa, but their equally cute, equally tiny cousins once lived in the Mediterranean. Which just, gah, Cyprus — stop making all the places that don't have tiny animals like that look bad! Sadly, the tiny hippos died out about the same time as the tiny elephants.

7. At least California's Channel Islands kept their adorable tiny foxes.

Photo from National Park Service/Wikimedia Commons.

In a surprise to no one, the Channel Island fox lives on the ... wait for it ... Channel Islands, located off the coast of California. The foxes only grow to about 20 inches long, half as big as their grey fox cousins on the mainland.

8. Cuba can keep its giant solenodons though.

A Hispaniolan solenodon, the Cuban solenodon's smaller cousin. Yes, this is the cute one. Image from Seb az86556/Wikimedia Commons.

The Cuban solenodon looks a lot like a shrew ... if a shrew was about two feet long and venomous.

All these unusual species — including hobbits — were able to evolve because of their unique island homes. But, today, many of these island ecosystems are in danger.

More than half of Hawaii's unique birds have been wiped out by newly introduced diseases, invasive species, and habitat loss — a pattern seen elsewhere too. Meanwhile climate change is changing weather patterns, destroying coral reefs, and even flooding some low-lying islands.

But we can still fight back and help preserve unique island ecosystems (and incredible big and small creatures).

By being careful about invasive species, protecting native ones, and, perhaps most importantly, weaning ourselves off fossil fuels, we can ensure the health of our islands — and make sure places for tiny, giant, or otherwise unusual animals, can thrive!

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