One of my favorite exhibits at the North Carolina Zoo features freshwater fish found in our state. Why do I like that exhibit? It’s because it includes one of the more unusual of our native fishes…the bowfin.
After my last visit to the Zoo, I came back to the NCC to see what we had on the bowfin and this is what I found in the catalog:
The bowfin : an old-fashioned fish with a new-found use. Cp378 UMc68.3 [Image of bowfin above comes from this pamphlet.]
Haven’t heard of the bowfin? Then take a look at the Wikipedia entry on the fish at:
According to a post at bowfinanglers.com, the bowfin’s numerous names include “grindle…. The spelling ‘grindal’ was used as far back as 1709, when English botanist John Lawson encountered the ‘soft sorry fish’ during his explorations of North and South Carolina.”