• Science series opens with ‘Secret Lives of Grouper’

    Frank Stephenson 11:21 p.m. EST February 20, 2016 From savory sandwiches to gourmet-grilled delights, grouper rank among the world’s finest and most popular seafood fare. So popular, in fact, that demand has long outstripped supply by commercial grouper fleets operating around the world. Surprisingly, despite groupers’ (there are at least 20 species in the Gulf of Mexico) enormous appeal, scientists have struggled to fully understand how groupers behave in the wild. Sketchy knowledge about how and where groupers grow and reproduce plagues government efforts around the world aimed at protecting and conserving them from over-harvest and potentially irreversible collapse. One of the leading and most successful champions of collecting hard-to-find…