It might not be one of the the shiniest stars of the deep sea, but the stargazer fish certainly has some unique adaptations. With eyes on top of its head (the source of that romantic name) and an upturned mouth, the stargazer can bury itself in the sand where it is perfectly poised to snatch an unsuspecting meal swimming by. And don’t get too dreamy-eyed if you ever try to handle one – those spines behind the head have venom that can pack a sting. This fish is more on guerrilla tactics than moonlit strolls!
Researchers performing a necropsy on a blue whale on a beach (photo: C. Young)
Gillian Rhett
By Gillian Rhett, Invertebrate Zoology & Molecular Ecology Lab
If you saw Nate’s post last month, you may have wondered: where does a whale carcass go? Sometimes it will wash up on a beach, which is lucky for us because that means we can collect all kinds of samples and information that help us learn more about how whales live and die.
But most whale carcasses don’t wash up on beaches. Initially, the gases that are a byproduct of the decomposition process build up inside the carcass and it floats, providing food for surface-dwelling animals such as seabirds. But when the remaining tissues and bones sink to the seafloor, that’s not the end of the story!
by Amanda Kahn, Invertebrate Zoology and Molecular Ecology Lab
In April, MLML opened its doors to the public and we spent the weekend showcasing our research and teaching people about marine science. We did this in a variety of ways: lectures, seminars, interactive exhibits, touch tanks, science as art, and even in puppet form! For those of you who missed the show, you can still learn about Dora the Sperm Whale’s exploration of the deep sea, discover different deep-sea habitats, and find out all about the many ways that animals eat! Check out the two-part video below, and be sure to catch our hit songs “Chemoautotrophy” and “Vertical Migration”!
Part 1:
Part 2:
Got any questions about the animals or habitats you saw in the show? Comment below or email and we’ll tell you all about them!
Moss Landing Marine Labs alumna Cassadra Brooks has taken her research on the Antarctic toothfish to a new level, hoping to effectively convey relevant science to the public and fisheries managers. Now a science communicator for The Last Ocean project, Cassandra recently interviewed MLML Professor Emeritus Greg Cailliet about the aspects of deep-sea fishes, including their old ages and slow growth and reproduction, that make them vulnerable to overfishing.
Dr. Cailliet is our local goldmine of ichthyology (that’s fish knowledge!). Get the scoop straight from the expert’s mouth!
No, this isn’t an elaborate fish puppet you’re looking at – it’s a Giant Grenadier caught in the depths of Monterey Bay on a research cruise. If it looks a little worse for wear (that pink color is from all its scales falling off), it’s because the fish was pulled up from a depth of around 1,000 feet. Like most deepsea fishes, the different species of grenadier tend to grow slowly, reproduce late in life, and can live to be quite old (several decades) – all of which makes them susceptible to overfishing.
Yes, believe it or not, fishing is a real issue for these squishy critters. Grenadier now makes an appearance on the West Coast version of Monterey Bay Aquarium’s new 2010 Seafood Watch pocket guides. And they’re in the red – that’s the “Avoid” section. In addition to a slow-growing life history, the fishery for grenadier is virtually unregulated, and often the result of destructive deepsea trawling. This is all good news you can use – I recently saw grenadier on a menu for the first time. Now I know to steer clear.
Curtailing demand for this fish probably wouldn’t be a problem if people only knew what it looked like – besides, how appetizing is something also called a “rattail”?
Snails living on and around hydrothermal chimneys in complete darkness provide excellent material for startling scientific discoveries (Photo taken by ROV Jason II, Dr. Charles Fisher, Chief Scientist)
Can you imagine being pregnant in your foot? That’s just one of the fascinating things I discovered about the snail species I studied for my thesis. I studied animals at hydrothermal vents (seafloor volcanoes) and the adaptations they’ve made that help them cope with their harsh environments. Specifically, I looked at two species of snails that live about 1.5 miles deep in the southwestern Pacific at a hydrothermal vent system near Tonga and Fiji.
These snails get as big as softballs when full-grown and have evolved many ways to deal with life in a chemically toxic volcanic world. My thesis focused mainly on reproductive adaptations, and I was able to find many of those. Not only have they wrapped their larvae in protective coatings, they also house them for a short time in a pouch in their foot! Like I said – pregnant in your foot!
Hangin' at the vent: These black snails and a variety of neighbors make a living in a harsh environment (Photo taken by ROV Jason II, Dr. Charles Fisher, Chief Scientist)
This research was challenging on many levels. First, since I was studying something so far away from California and so deep in the ocean, I had only one chance to get the samples I needed and there was no guarantee they would be reproductively mature. With the expense of the research vessel, the submersible robot needed to collect samples at that depth, and the many crew members needed to run everything, these types of expeditions are much too costly to repeat. So I had one shot to get it right!
Also, I was studying animals that had very little previous research done on them (in fact, no one had ever studied their reproductive systems before) so I had very little guidance and often had no clue what I was doing! It took many visits with experts in many fields before I was able to piece the clues together and see the true picture of the bizarre mechanisms these animals were using to give their babies the best chance at survival.
For me, it was the challenge of this research that was most rewarding in the end. There is nothing like being the first person in the world to discover something! That’s what science is all about. More details to come on all of the crazy adaptations we found in these alien snails…
Your mission, should you choose to accept it: describe a new species unknown to science. That’s exactly the mission a few MLML students undertook last spring in a class on systematics. Systematics is the study of how all living things on earth are related to each other through evolutionary relationships. It involves figuring out how species are grouped together in these relationships, and identifying what makes species different from one another – a lot like a detective piecing clues together.
Ichthyology student Kelsey James recently cracked the case of of the Eastern Pacific black ghost shark. This fish is a new species of chimaera, which is a cartilaginous fish related to sharks and rays. Although scientists collected a specimen in Baja California in the 1970s and thought it was a new species, the fish languished in a jar for years waiting for someone to take the time to investigate it (a story all too sad and true for many new species out there). After Kelsey’s close examination, she and other scientists decided it was indeed different from other chimaeras, and gave it the scientific name Hydrolagus melanophasma in a recent publication.
According to Kelsey, the process of describing a new species is actually fairly straight forward. “First you have to look at everything closely related to it in the same genus, and then decide why it is or isn’t an already described species,” she said. Sometimes it’s easy to see that a species looks different from others, but describing why it’s different in terms of body measurements (like fin size and spacing, jaw length, etc.) can be much harder to explain. “The hardest part for me was describing a few good key characteristics that anyone could use to identify this species, which is called a diagnosis,” she said
What made the project particularly exciting for Kelsey was that MBARI (the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute) had ROV footage of her species swimming around at 1500 m in the Gulf of California (video above). “It is spectacular to see this creature in action,” she said after watching their tapes. “The differences between the preserved specimen, which I had been looking at for 2 months, and the live one were astounding.”
Check it out blog fans – Amanda is guest blogging today at the awesome Deep Sea News blog! (Which is the place to get the lowdown on weird critters lurking in the darky deep.)
Euplectella: sentimental yet structurally sound
As part of the DSN countdown to Halloween, featuring the 27 coolest deep sea creatures (Why 27, you ask? “Because it’s 7 more than 20,” they reply), Amanda shines the spotlight on a deep sea sponge called Venus’s Flower Basket (Euplectella), a brainless but beautiful architectural marvel.
“Running transects across the abyssal plain is about as exciting as driving across Nevada…until you run across Euplectella,” Amanda writes. Click here to visit Deep Sea News and read the whole story – and find out why this sponge makes an excellent wedding present in Japan!
Editor’s Note: Graduate student Kyle Reynolds describes her experience in the South Pacific, where she participated in a 2006 research cruise to study organisms living on the hydrothermal vent system of the Lau Basin.
Looking out of the airplane as it began its descent toward Fiji, I remember feeling like I was having an out-of-body experience.We had crossed the equator and the International Date Line during this flight – two firsts for me!Once the plane touched down and we made our way to Suva, the capital, I would be embarking on a multidisciplinary research expedition with several teams of scientists from around the world to study the biology, chemistry, and geology of hydrothermal vents in the Lau Basin.My heart was in my throat as I elatedly took in the sights and sounds of my last moments on dry land for the next 30 days.
Once onboard the R/V Melville (the Scripps Institute of Oceanography ship we’d be using), the scientists quickly went about the task of securing their own cargo in their lab spaces to keep anything from spilling or breaking in transit.Our research would involve multiple deployments of a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) named the Jason II, or “Jason” for short.Jason would be working almost non-stop over the next month to take videos as well as animal, geological, and chemical samples for the various researchers’ projects.I was there to obtain snail samples for my thesis research, and would be using them to study their reproductive adaptations.Being the newbie, I was given the midnight to 4:00 a.m. shift to stand my watch in the Jason control van each night.The control van is a large metal container from which the crew can pilot Jason, while scientists record the data, log notes, and direct the collection efforts.
Welcome! Drop-in to the "real-life tales" of graduate students at the Moss Landing Marine Laboratories in California, and find out what being a marine biologist (or chemist or geologist or physicist...) is all about!
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