WELFARE, PRODUCTIVITY AND QUALITATIVE TRAITS OF EGG IN LAYING HENS REARED UNDER DIFFERENT REARING SYSTEMS

The welfare, production performance and some qualitative characteristics of eggs obtained under three different rearing systems (conventional, organic and organic-plus) were compared. Three homogeneous groups, each of 120 White Leghorn hens, fed the same diets, were assigned to different rearing systems and data were recorded for 1 year. The welfare indicators were the following: first impact, behavioural patterns, tonic immobility and plumage status. Productive performance was recorded (% deposition; egg weight) and some qualitative traits (Haugh index, yolk colour, yolk, albumen and egg shell weight) were evaluated. Well-being was greatly affected by rearing system. The best welfare status was observed in hens of the organic-plus group, whereas the worst was in the conventional group (caged hens). Caged hens showed little interest or fear of observers, at times they had high tonic immobility and some aggressive pecking; the status of their plumage was very poor. On the contrary, caged hens produced more eggs, even if their qualitative traits (Haugh index and yolk colour) were worse than the organicplus eggs. The intense motor activity of organic hens and the concurrent intake of grass reduced their productive level; further egg deposition seemed more affected by seasonal variation

The future of the biodiversity of the Gran Caldera Scientific Reserve: Translating science into policy to develop an effective management plan

White paper prepared for the Workshop on ‘The future of the biodiversity of the Gran Caldera Scientific Reserve', celebrated in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea, in June 201

Bionomics of brown crab Cancer pagurus in the south east Ireland inshore fishery

The south east inshore brown crab fishery is delimited by the boundary of longitude - 6.3, within a coastal band of approximately 18 km (10 nm) in width and it extends along the south coast of Co Wexford for a distance of approximately 55 km; evidence for the stock extending into the inshore fishery west of the Waterford Harbour estuary is sparse. The fishery, whose maximum extent is calculated at 427 km2, yielded up to 700 t per year during the 1990s. In 2002 annual landings of 959 t accounted for 8.2 % of the national catch. The average overall LPUE was 0.87 kg per pot lifted in that year. Brown crab were landed whole or as claws, for human consumption, and clawed or, of poorer quality, with claws, to provide bait for the whelk fishery. This fishery is not considered to have any discard of legally sized crab and, in consequence, a large percentage of the landings is poorly conditioned. The stock is intensively fished; the amount of gear in use increased almost 5 fold since the mid 1970s. Landings per boat declined since the late 1980s although this may be as a result of sharing among a greater number of vessels. In 2002 an estimated 60 - 69 vessels fished brown crab in the peak autumn months. In 2002 and early 2003, 3,674 crabs were tagged in the inshore fishery; of these 14.4% were recaptured (12.8% of tagged females and 20.7% of tagged males). Observations made during tagging operations in 2002 only were used to clarify sex ratio and the incidence of recently moulted animals. The crab stock consists of a migratory female component which moves into shallow waters during the summer months probably to moult and mate. The male component is more sedentary. Both sexes move at speeds which slow during the summer months and increase again as the year advances; maximum speeds of 2 km/day were recorded for both sexes in the autumn. Movements by male crab were random while females adopted a south west trajectory. The greatest distance recorded for a tagged female crab was 136 km after 287 days at liberty. Other tagged females, reported by French vessels, were recaptured in ICES division VIIg which may be the over-wintering area for the stock. These animals had moved between 69 and 75 km from their release point. Tag reporting by the industry is considered to have been low. Based on the 'rate of tag recovery, the estimated rate of exploitation was lower than expected in an intensely fished stock. Population estimates were attempted using the Petersen formula and on the basis of assumptions about mortalities which recognized the phenomena of moulting and migration. The south east crab stock moves with the current which is westerly along the southern Irish coast. Recorded migrations were also short when compared with those of brown crab in the northern stock and in several other documented fisheries. The Nymphe Bank which adjoins the south east fishery has a water current pattern which retains larvae and it is known to have a high density of brown crab in the plankton. The existence of retaining currents may make the kind of long migrations which characterise others unnecessary for this stock. The status of the south east fishery is not known. LPUE indices provided by the Roscoff super-crabber fleet for ICES statistical division VIIg remained fairly stable between 1987 and 2002 but the quantity of crab captured by those vessels has declined considerably in most years since 1995.Funder: Marine Institut

Aesthetics of self-scaling: parallaxed transregionalism and Kutluğ Ataman's art practice

This article examines relations of ethnography, contemporary art-practice, globalisation and scalar geopolitics with particular reference to Kutluğ Ataman’s artworks. Having been shortlisted for the Turner Prize at the Tate and awarded the prestigious international Carnegie Prize in 2004 with his forty-screen video installation Küba (2004), Ataman became an extremely well-known, globally acclaimed artist and filmmaker. Self-conscious of their global travel and critically attentive to the contemporary ethnographic turn in the visual arts scene, Ataman’s video-works perform a conscientious failure of representing cultural alterity as indigeneity. Concentrating on the artist’s engagement with ethnography, this article contains three main parts. Analyses of the selection of videos in each part will give an account of different scalar aspects of Ataman’s artworks. It will first revisit a previous study (Çakirlar 2011) on the artist’s earlier work of video-portraits including Never My Soul! (2002) and Women Who Wear Wigs (1999). A detailed discussion of Küba follows, which may be taken as the ‘hinge - work’ in Ataman’s oeuvre that marks a scalar transition in his critical focus - from body and identity to community and geopolitics. The discussion will then move to a brief analysis of the series Mesopotamian Dramaturgies, including the screen-based sculptures Dome (2009), Column (2009), Frame (2009), English as a Second Language (2009), and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (2009). Rather than addressing scale as a differential concept, this article aims to demonstrate the ways in which Ataman’s art-practice produces self-scaling, self-regioning subjects that unsettle the hierarchical constructions of scale and facilitates a critique of the scalar normativity within the global art world’s regionalisms and internationalisms