It’s been more than two decades since the harvesting of river herring was outlawed in Massachusetts. But now, the Cape Cod herring run is finally back in action.

“Every spring, historically, [river herring] were harvested in huge numbers as they’re swimming up into local rivers,” said Claudia Geib, a freelance science journalist. “There used to be hundreds of millions of these fish at one time swimming up. But overfishing, dams, pollution … has dwindled their numbers. But thanks to some careful management practices, these fish have rebounded.”

The herring run in Harwich officially opened on April 22.

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Geib said river herring, which are different from the ocean herring often found at the seafood counter at grocery stores, are often used as bait or even as fertilizer.

Eric Sullivan, senior technology editor at Scientific American, said the story of the river herring’s return highlights how limits lead to successful conservation.

“The town didn’t just reopen the run and say, ‘Have at it, take as many as you want,’” Sullivan said. “There were permits given out, short harvest windows, catch limits for each person that had a permit, people counting the fish that people were bringing away. So there’s a little bit of bureaucracy to it, but I think that it’s the reason that this tradition can come back and hopefully thrive again without pretending that the old pressures have disappeared.”

Meanwhile, two new experimental drugs are showing tremendous promise in the fight against pancreatic cancer.

Pancreatic cancer, which is highly aggressive, has about a 13% survival rate after five years — a significantly lower survival rate compared to breast cancer (about 91%-92%), prostate cancer (about 98%) and colorectal cancer (63%-65%.)

Independent science journalist and editor Shraddha Chakradhar said part of the deadly nature of the disease is centered around when it is detected.

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“Most pancreatic cancer diagnoses are made when they’ve already spread to lymph nodes and metastasized, so they tend to be late-stage diagnoses,” Chakradhar said. “And so, you have more targets at that point — you have a more difficult disease to treat.

The two drugs — one of which is a daily pill and the other is an MRNA vaccine — are helping to extend the lives of patients.

“These patients were given an average life expectancy of less than seven months, and now it’s ... a little under 14 months, actually. So that’s almost a doubling, which is quite rare in this field,” Chakradhar said.

And in the tech world, two industry giants have taken their fight to the courtroom.

Elon Musk and Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, the artificial intelligence company that created ChatGPT, are in a legal battle over the future of the AI company. Musk claims OpenAI is reneging on its promise to stay a nonprofit with a mission to benefit humanity. OpenAI is valued at $852 billion and has both a for-profit and nonprofit arm.

Sullivan said though the drama between Musk and Altman is what’s making headlines, he’s more focused on the bigger issue at hand.

“I really do think that there is a valid point that this was founded as a non-profit and with a lot of language about building AI for the public good, and now it’s one of the most valuable companies in the world with huge investors, huge computing needs, huge commercial pressures now because of the for-profit arm,” Sullivan said. “And so the trial is, I think, really about how those early promises, and whether those early promises still mean anything once the money gets this big.”

All that, plus communities taking on data centers, a gene therapy breakthrough for children with profound hearing loss, and the trouble caused by overheated sharks on this week’s science and tech news roundtable.

Guests

Stories featured in this week’s roundtable