fish
bleimanb | April 9, 2008Thanks to two readers, the infamous Mike Witherspoon and the illustrious Tanya Poon, we have been alerted to two mega-sweet articles in the New York Times.
The first from the Science Times yesterday tells the story of Cape Coral, Florida, a coastal town that was alarmed by a strange noise coming from the ocean which "reverberat[ed] through their homes." The townsfolk- mostly retirees -almost got their government to dish out $47,000 to an engineering company to fix the municipal utility system that they blamed for the racket. Turns out it was the powerful mating calls of a fish called the…
zooillogix | April 6, 2008
Welcome to the eleventh and by far the most important, although surprisingly the most poorly formatted, installment of Carnival of the Blue. Before we get down to the watery, salty, and sometimes rubbery details, we wanted to take a moment to ponder the significance of Zooillogix's role as host of the eleventh COB. Why not the fifth or the ever popular tenth? Why not the second or maybe seventh, sixth, eighth, ninth or third?
Well, according to Biblestudy.org, "If ten is the number which marks the perfection of Divine order, then eleven is an addition to it, subversive of and undoing that…
zooillogix | April 3, 2008
A completely new family of fishes may have been discovered in the coral beds of Indonesia. Dive company owners, Buck and Fitrie Randolph of Maluku Divers spotted the fish in January but waited to photograph additional specimens before contacting the experts. Interviewed by Seattle PI, University of Washington ichthyologist Ted Pietsch, who specializes in anglerfish, said it was unlike anything he had ever seen, sputtering "I'm still thrilled. It's an incredible thing. It's remarkable."
The pink-and-tan striped frogfish cannot be identified by any fish experts so far. While Pietsch is…
bleimanb | March 26, 2008In keeping with our nautically themed posts (perhaps a teaser for April's upcoming "Carnival of the Blue," hosted by none other than yours truly the Fabulous Flying Bleiman Brothers), we bring you this story: Scientists at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) at Wood's Hole are attempting to train fish to do the stupidest thing possible, catch themselves in nets when beckoned by fishermen.
Listening to U2 makes me want to "self-exterminate," perhaps the scientists should try that?
The idea is to train captured or farm raised black sea bass to associate a loud tone with feeding time.…
edyong | March 11, 2008
Some of us have enough trouble finding the food we want among the ordered aisles of a supermarket. Now imagine that the supermarket itself is in the middle of a vast, featureless wasteland and is constantly on the move, and you begin to appreciate the challenges faced by animals in the open ocean.
Thriving habitats like coral reefs may present the photogenic face of the sea, but most of the world's oceans are wide expanses of emptiness. In these aquatic deserts, all life faces the same challenge: how to find enough food. Now, a couple of interesting studies have shed new light on the…
zooillogix | February 28, 2008A fascinating new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that the impact of human fishing may be reducing the fitness of fish populations overall. It may also explain why your grandfather insists that "the fish don't bite like they used to." The thinking goes like this: bold and aggressive fish tend to eat more, grow faster and ultimately have more baby fish. They also tend to be the ones that chase and bite fishing lures, and in the case of commercial fishing, get caught in gill nets.
Aggressive, fast breeding fish are naturally attracted to huge…
grrlscientist | February 20, 2008tags: environment, commercial fishing industry, bottom trawling, orange roughy, Chilean sea bass, seafood
Landsat satellite image, Gulf of Mexico (mouth of Vermillion Bay, Louisiana), taken on 10/12/92. Note the abundant narrow sediment trails, most in shallow water (<20m), possibly caused by trawling.
Image: SkyTruth [larger view].
Ain't technology grand? Thanks to Landsat satellite images, which are available on the internet, the ordinary citizen can now see what is happening to our planet -- but sadly, much of it is not good. For example, the above image of the Gulf of Mexico was…
esiegel | February 16, 2008So I am preparing an audition video to be Dangerman this weekend, which will go up on youtube and get posted here next week. In the meantime, as promised for the weekend, I have a new weekend diversion for you: the archer fish, a.k.a. toxotes jaculatrix (hee hee). But what makes it so cool? Oh, I don't know, how about this slow-motion video:
Did you see that?? It's a fish that hunts insects by shooting them with water, and then eating them when they fall into the water, often catching them before they ever leave the air! What's really amazing about this is that the fish needs to be able to "…
grrlscientist | February 15, 2008tags: researchblogging.org, climate change, global warming, oceanic dead zones, west coast, North America, Oregon state, Washington state
Millions of dead crabs are washing up onto Oregon and Washington state beaches from the offshore "dead zone".
Ever since it was first noticed by crab fishermen who hauled up hundreds of dead and dying crabs in 2002, the "dead zone" that popped up in the waters along the northwestern coastal shelf just off the coast of Oregon has claimed unknown millions of lives. This oxygen-depleted region has transformed formerly rich seafloor communities teeming with…
grrlscientist | February 13, 2008tags: shark, elasmobranch, great white shark, Carcharodon carcharias, Image of the Day
This is the most amazing wildlife image I've ever seen. If you don't agree with me, then you have to show me what's more amazing than this!
Kayaking with a Great White Shark, Carcharodon carcharias.
Image: Thomas P. Peschak [purchase this image].
The photographer writes; To capture this image I tied myself to the tower of the research boat Lamnidae and leaned into the void, precariously hanging over the ocean while waiting patiently for a white shark to come along. I wanted to [take] a photograph that…
zooillogix | February 12, 2008A novel approach to connecting people and animals while generating new revenue or exploitation and poor judgment from those who should know better?
The Georgia Aquarium announced this morning a new program that allows regular Joe Public to swim with their famed whale sharks, among other critters, in their largest tank. For the low price of $199 a swim or $290 for a SCUBA dive (actually quite a deal compared with traveling to the Philippines or one of the other exotic locales where you might get a chance to dive with them), you get a guaranteed swim with these biggest of all fishes. It looks…
gregladen | February 11, 2008It is no secret that shark videos are very, very popular. So, it is not surprising that Mark Powell at Blogfish has posted this rare and unusual footage of shark-human interaction.
gregladen | February 7, 2008The video of the shark is cool, but to me it's just a video of a shark. But listen to the commentary and you realize that this is a big deal. Five or six meters long, a head a meter wide, something really interesting about its gill slits. I'm glad these guys are having so much fun!
This comes from Deep Sea News
gregladen | January 27, 2008The loss of sight in cave dwelling species is widely known. We presume that since sight in utter darkness has no fitness value, the mutation of a gene critical to the development of the sense of sight is not selected against. Over time, any population living in darkness will eventually experience experience such mutations, and these mutations can reach fixation.
Astyanax mexicanus: Top is the surface, sighted form, bottom is the cave-dwelling, blind form. From the Jeffery Lab.Beyond this, we may hypothesize that a mutation "turning off" sight could be beneficial. By definition, an…
grrlscientist | January 26, 2008tags: coral reef, marine life, endangered species, Image of the Day
Seventeen countries have marked 2008 as the International Year of the Reef, a worldwide campaign to raise awareness about the importance of coral reefs and to motivate action to protect them.
Image: S. Zumbrunn, Conservation International. [larger size].
gregladen | January 25, 2008The Hagfish, or Slime Eel, is said to be an aphrodisiac. Hard evidence that hagfish can enhance sexual prowess is lacking, but this fish can get evolutionary biologists very hot.
A recently published paper, reviewed here, on Pharyngula, addresses the interesting evolutionary question. In general terms, it is this: Hagfish possess traits that appear to be ancestral to vertebrates, but that in fact might be derived. Therefore, they are either a sister group to the living vertebrates, or are correctly placed within the vertebrates (i.e., with the lampreys). If the latter, it is correct (…
zooillogix | January 24, 2008...but this one must have been an absolute nightmare. Hope they had lots of sucker fish.
This fabulous fish tank was once a main attraction at the Liquid Potion Lounge, a long defunct coffee bar in Evanston, IL (my sort of current hometown). As the pictures attest, the fish did actually use the bridges/tunnels (I wonder which is the more appropriate word here) between the various tanks, but how much so is unclear. Benny and I have long wondered why aquarium manufacturers never tried to develop more interesting tanks and start a craze like Habitrail did with its iconic yellow gerbil tubing.…
grrlscientist | January 15, 2008tags: researchblogging.org, blind cave fish, Astyanax mexicanus, evolution, fish, genetics
Blind cave fish, Astyanax mexicanus.
Image: Orphaned. Please contact me for proper credit and linkage.
Do you keep tropical freshwater fishes? I have kept tropical fishes for most of my life and was always intrigued by the so-called "blind cave fish", Astyanax mexicanus, that were sometimes offered for sale to the public. These fish evolved from a sighted species that live in surface streams, but since the blind cave fishes lived in caves since the mid-Pleistocene or earlier, they were not exposed…
grrlscientist | December 28, 2007tags: marine fish, benthic fish, new species, streaming video
This is a wonderful streaming video that shows footage of a variety of new species of benthic sea life discovered by a new submersible with a camera -- prepare to be amazed. Includes a nice soundtrack, too [4:52]
zooillogix | December 17, 2007Using aluminum panels as electrodes, Japanese inventor Kazuhiko Minawa has powered a mall Christmas tree with an electric eel. Minawa told Reuters Televesion that "If we could gather all electric eels from all around the world, we would be able to light up an unimaginably giant Christmas tree." Hmmmm.... let's not do that.
The tree has proven to be quite the Christmas attraction. Eel is particularly popular during the summer, because it's rich in vitamins, which the Japanese believe they lose through sweating in the summer heat. "I would love to have an eel like this at home. This is very…