The Washington State Fish and Wildlife game warden pulled up next to the boat. "Whatcha fishing for?" he asked.
"Bocaccio," Nick replied.
The game warden gave him a skeptical look, owing to the fact that Puget Sound bocaccio rockfish are an endangered species, totally off-limits to fishermen.
"And canary," Nick continued.
The canary rockfish, a lovely orange-creamsicle with scales, is listed as threatened in our area.
"Really," responded the game warden, not sure now whether he was kidding.
The warden's eyes got wide as he began to believe Nick's story. I've caught the dumbest poachers in Washington State! he must have been thinking.
That's when Nick hit him with the final piece of information. "Oh, and we're with NOAA under a federal fisheries research permit."
Nick keeps the game warden on his toes.
Sadly, I was not present when this conversation took place. I've heard it retold by my NOAA Hollings Scholarship mentor, Nick, and I can only imagine that game warden's face. I was, however, lucky enough to accompany Nick and a band of dedicated local anglers on a similar mission.
Our goal was to obtain genetic samples of these three endangered species of rockfish to determine whether their south Puget Sound populations were distinct from their open coastal counterparts, as had been predicted when these populations were given endangered status, or if they moved and bred freely with coastal fishes.
The yelloweyes, canaries and bocaccios evaded us that day, but I proudly hauled up one brown rockfish, Sebastes auricuculatus.
My most exciting catch, the relatively common a brown rockfish.
We measured each fish before releasing it with a special weighted pressure-release clip that held the fish by its lower jaw without damaging it.
The rockfishes, used to being at depths of at least 100 feet, had a little expansion trouble at the surface. This one's stomach can be seen protruding from its mouth. The hope is that everything returns to its normal deflated state once the fish is released at depth.
The crew also caught two species of sculpin: a buffalo or Enophrys bison, shown here, and a red Irish lord or Hemilepidotus hemilepidotus, my personal favorite. I sure wish I could have magically shipped these guys back in time and space to Friday Harbor Labs, where my Puddle research crew could have studied the functional morphology of their jaw muscles!
A buffalo sculpin shows off his preopercular spines and makes cute little growling sounds.
But mostly we caught dogs. By which I mean sharks.
"I got a big one!!!"
A spiny dogfish, Squalus acanthias, to be exact.
Another dog!
Did I mention it was Shark Week?
We recorded the size and sex of each dogfish we caught, even though we weren't there for shark research. The day's motto: "Don't waste an opportunity to take data because you'll never know when you might need it!" I lost count around fifty. Next time you're trying to sex a shark, just remember:
A male spiny dogfish has two claspers, modified pelvic fins that transfer sperm to the female during sexual reproduction.
A female spiny dogfish has no claspers.
Dude, that's private!
We also hooked some unexpected invertebrates...
Such as this scallop.
And this purple sea star, Pisaster ochraceus.
We didn't accomplish our goal of sampling endangered rockfish genetics, but we had a great time out on the water. There's no such thing as a bad day spent boating on the Puget Sound, sandwiched between silver water and pewter sky.
I think these gulls, hitching a leisurely ride on a barge of sand, would certainly agree.
The Fish Class here at Friday Harbor Labs went out on our research vessel, the Centennial, and bottom-trawled for fish. I tagged along to nab any sculpin that might show up.
Fast facts: Sculpin are spiny bottom-fish in the superfamily Cottidae. There are 756 sculpin species worldwide! The species we're studying have huge mouths which they use to capture live shrimp and fish. Here's a video of our Great Sculpin (Myoxocephalus polyacanthocephalus -- yes we have to learn that name) hunting a shrimp:
Working on the Centennial was a boat-load of fun! I spent a while on the bridge with our captain listening to tales of enormous ocean swells and Antarctic ice-breaking. I learned about all the equipment, from two-way radios and bathymetric charts to sonar seafloor profiles and all-inclusive GPS maps. (I'm pretty sure all those names are wrong! But you get the idea.)
Our fearless captain.
Here we are waiting for the trawl net to arrive.
And here is our second trawl net arriving. Can you guess what type of bottom we trawled on? (The options are rocky, sandy, or muddy...)
Then came the fun part. We got to search through bucketloads of mucky sediment and pull out anything cool!
Sorting through the trawl muck.
I learned a ton by talking to all the experts on board. For example, we once pulled up a Pacific sanddab (Citharhicthys sordidus), a "sinistral flatfish." What does that mean, you ask? Well I asked, too, and it means that both eyes migrate to the fish's left side as it matures. I then learned that "sin" is Latin for "left," an words like "sinner" and "sinister" come from our ancient association of "left" with"evil." I'm not sure how accurate the etymological lesson was, but these folks sure did know their fish!
"I got a flatty!"
We pulled up nine spiny dogfish (a small species of shark), dozens of flatfish, hundreds of shrimp, and a whole mess of kelp. There were also lovely invertebrates of all kinds, but I could tell the Fish Class students had a soft-spot for the vertebrates.
A common sunstar (Crossaster papposus).
There were also a couple Algae Class teachers on board, so I took the opportunity to brush up on my marine plants. Did you know the "algae" is not a scientific term? Things called "algae" might actually be plants, bacteria, or something else entirely. But "seaweed" is a technical term. There are three types of seaweed algae:
Brown (olive brown in color; for example Bull Kelp)
Green (grass green in color; for example Sea Lettuce)
Red (can be any color other than olive-brown or grass-green!)
Now you know more about the ocean! Aren't you glad? :)
