This batch of poetic terms comes from a particularly fishy technical report—enjoy!
Area of production foregone. A demographic model that calculates the area of spawning habitat required to offset the number of eggs and larvae lost as a result of intake operation. This is at the same time utterly practical and yet mindblowingly and heartbreakingly metaphysical, and that is what makes it poetry.
The following is a very short sample of bizarre common names for fish:
alewife
hogchoker
mummichog
cunner
I’d really like to know the etymology on these fish, but a cursory search turns up very little. If anybody knows more, please drop me a comment or an email. You know I love this stuff.