Cephalopodcast

The NY Times recently did an article on soniferous fishes. These are animals like drums and toadfish that produce, and presumably communicate, with sound. In some circumstances, these noises can be heard by home owners living on canals or live-aboard boats.

However, there is a quote in the article from Professor Philip Lobel from Boston University that annoys (a noise?) me:

Yet of the 30,000 species out there, only about 1,200 sound producers have been cataloged, and far fewer have been recorded. Even common goldfish have merited just two scientific publications. In fact, said Philip Lobel, a professor of biology at Boston University, “Most aquarium fish are sonic. Keeping fish in an aquarium is like keeping a canary in a soundproof cage.”

Have you ever pressed your ear against a home aquarium? It’s typically a din of bubblers and impellers that are anything but noiseless. I’ve wondered what kind of effect that has on the captive fish. And now doubly so if it turns out the creatures are trying to communicate with each other over the racket.

Dolphin Diner Bell

The article also makes mention of how dolphins listen for soniferous fish. Researchers at my work have noted the prevalence of soniferous fish in the diet of area dolphins. It appears that the dolphins studied do not actively and energetically echolocate all the time. Instead, they passively listen for the calls of their prey to locate them generally. Then when they are closer, they use echolocation to home in for the kill. This also suggests that there is an evolutionary interplay between sound detecting dolphins and sound producing fish. A similar relationship has been demonstrated between calling frogs and frog-eating bats. I wouldn’t be surprised if there is some similar acoustic aposematism going on underwater too.

• NY Times: What’s Making That Awful Racket? Surprisingly, It May Be Fish
• NY Times: Run Noisy, Run Deep, and interactive piece that lets you listen to the noise of soniferous fish, including the fast repetitive ticks (FaRTs) of herring.

lionfish, by jon hanson

Common names: Lionfish, lion fish, zebrafish, firefish, turkeyfish, red lionfish, butterfly cod, ornate butterfly-cod, peacock lionfish, red firefish, scorpion volitans

Happy Turkey Day for those in the States. Ben Franklin famously suggested that the turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) would make a more fitting symbol for the United States than the bald eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus). Many derisively scoff at the notion, but if you read this account of his recommendation, especially in light of current events, it’s rather telling we chose the latter bird instead.

But there is another turkey out there that I wanted to mention today. This one won’t end up on too many dinner plates, probably because it’s a venomous fish. more commonly known as the lionfish in the United States, Pterois volitans is also called the Turkeyfish in many other parts of the world. Normally found in the Indo-Pacific Ocean, it has recently been found in increasing numbers off the east coast of the U.S. It is a common and spectacular staple of the live reef fish trade and authorities suspect specimens released from aquariums were the original source of the invasive population.

The Turkeyfish is in the Scorpionfish family and is a predator of smaller fish. Authorities fear that as its range expands into new areas, it will have a disruptive effect on the ecology of these environments.

More Turkeyfish Day links appear over at the Invasive Species Weblog.

• NOAA: Lionfish Invasion Teacher’s Guide
• EISF: Lionfish Invasive Species Education & Outreach
• Invasive Lionfish Species Confirmed in Gray’s Reef National Marine Sanctuary
• Wikipedia: Lionfish

Tomorrow I will be participating in the second cephalopod conference organized by the TONMO.com community, TONMOCON II.

Conference-goers will enjoy a full day of back-to-back presentations and panel discussions on various subjects pertaining to cephalopods, including octopus and cuttlefish care, cephalopods in art, cephalopod study in marine biology, and much more. Dr. Steve O’Shea is the featured speaker, covering “Giant Squids, Whales, Sex and Conservation.”

There is the possibility of a live webcast/Skypecast/Talkshoecast of the event. Or at the very least, audio recordings of the sessions will be made and posted. More details and the agenda are available here.

The Radula blog reports that students at John Adams Middle School vandalized some of the fish tanks during a recent fieldtrip to the Albuquerque Aquarium.

There is damage to two separate tanks, which had been gouged and “tagged”. The massive shark tank may be repairable but the tank holding the moon jellies will have to be replaced at a cost of over $30,000. The biopark has banned the school (an APS school) from all future biopark venues.

If you would like to donate to help repair the aquariums, contact the office of the BioPark Director at 505-764-6211 for details.

• KOAT: Albuquerque Aquarium Vandalized
• KOAT: Animal Tanks Damaged At Albuquerque’s Aquarium
• The Radula: What we value
• Albuquerque Aquarium