AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 CASTS Your Weekly Global Fishing News Roundup Welcome back, anglers! Another week, another batch of incredible stories from the watery corners of our planet. From monster halibut to baby squids filmed for the first time, from medieval shipwrecks to NASA tracking plankton from space, the fishing world never stops delivering the goods. Let's dive in!
CATCH OF THE WEEK: 100-Pound Halibut Closes Out Westport's Season
James Carpenter just put an exclamation point on Westport, Washington's 2025 fishing season with an absolute monster of a Pacific halibut. This beast tipped the scales at 100 pounds, making it the biggest fish landed in Westport all year. The massive flatfish was hauled up in the final days of the season, giving local anglers something to brag about all winter long. These doormat-sized halibut are the stuff of legend, and Carpenter's catch proves that patience and persistence pay off. The fish was so big it barely fit on the boat deck! Congratulations to James on an epic season closer that'll be tough to top in 2026.
DEEP SEA MYSTERIES: First Ever Footage of Baby Colossal Squid Hold onto your fishing hats, because scientists just captured something that's been on the bucket list for over a century. The Schmidt Ocean Institute filmed the first ever footage of a colossal squid in its natural habitat, about 2,000 feet down in the remote South Atlantic Ocean. Now, before you get too excited, this wasn't one of those 23-foot monsters with eyes the size of dinner plates. This was a baby, measuring just one foot long, but it's still a groundbreaking moment for marine science. For 100 years, we've known these deep sea giants exist, but we've only ever seen dead specimens washed up or caught in nets. Seeing one alive and swimming? That's like spotting Bigfoot with a GoPro. The translucent little squid was captured on camera during a deep sea expedition, and scientists are already analyzing the footage to learn more about these elusive creatures' behavior and habitat preferences.
WRECK & RELIC: World's Largest Medieval Cargo Ship Discovered
Maritime archaeologists off Copenhagen just hit the jackpot. They've discovered Svælget 2, a 600-year-old cargo ship that's being called the "Emma Maersk of the Middle Ages." This massive cog ship, built around 1410, measures 28 meters long, 9 meters wide, and could haul 300 tons of cargo. That's enormous for its time! What makes this find even more incredible is its preservation. Sitting at 13 meters depth, protected by sand and silt, the starboard side is intact from keel to gunwale, complete with rigging details that have never been seen before on a cog. Dendrochronology (tree ring dating) revealed the ship was built using timber from both Pomerania (modern Poland) and the Netherlands, showing just how interconnected medieval trade networks were. This ship carried everyday goods like salt, timber, and bricks across the Baltic Sea, and its size tells us that by 1410, European merchants had established reliable markets and trade routes. For anyone who loves maritime history, this is a treasure trove of information about how our ancestors moved goods across the seas.
SCIENCE CORNER: NASA Tracks Whale Food From Space
Here's something wild: NASA scientists can now track massive swarms of tiny red plankton from space, and it might just save the whales. Satellite oceanographer Rebekah Shunmugapandi from the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences discovered that huge blooms of Calanus finmarchicus (a tiny crustacean that's basically whale candy) are visible in satellite imagery when they swarm in dense enough concentrations. We're talking 150,000 individuals per cubic meter in some areas of the Gulf of Maine, with swarms spanning over 400 square miles. These red plankton patches show up clearly in enhanced MODIS satellite data, and here's why that matters: North Atlantic right whales follow these plankton blooms like a roadmap. When the food moves, the whales move, sometimes into dangerous shipping lanes and fishing zones. By tracking the plankton from space, scientists can now predict where endangered right whales are likely to travel, allowing for faster responses like voluntary ship slowdowns, temporary fishing closures, or rerouted vessel traffic. It's a game changer for whale conservation, proving once again that sometimes the best way to protect giants is to follow the tiniest creatures in the ocean.
That's a wrap for this week's global fishing roundup! From Pacific halibut to deep sea squids, from medieval trade ships to space age whale tracking, the world of fishing and marine science continues to amaze. Keep your lines tight and your eyes on the horizon, because you never know what's lurking beneath the waves or what scientists will discover next.
Until next week, tight lines! Sources: Instagram/allwashingtonfishing, Scientific American, Viking Ship Museum Denmark, NASA/Bigelow Laboratory/AS USA
