Ichthyology (FISHES) with Chris Thacker

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Hey, Ologized, it's your old dad over here, Ali Ward, I'm not recording in my closet today, can you believe it? I'm sixteen floors up in a hotel in New York, and it's midnight on a Friday night, and I'm out here for work shooting this new show. If you listen to the very end of each episode, I usually tell secret to the people who stick it out past the credits, so you may have heard it last week. And if not, more on that when they let me tell you legally

Now?

Eke these right?

Whatever? Okay? So this ologist let me into the bowels of a natural history museum, to the very basement where she walked me through Florida ceiling gray metal shelves filled with jars of fish suspended in these amber, chunky liquids, past these articulated fish skeletons. Apparently the collection the museum is over five million specimens of just fish, which weigh a lot of pounds, so they got to put them on the bottom floor because they're so heavy. That's the

That's right.

I study fish. How often do you? People spelled that wrong?

Pretty much every time. And it's very awkward to say, oh, there's two hs in that, because that kind of doesn't make sense of people two ages? What it's what? What? But yeah, it's constantly misspelled. It's misspelled on my badge, is it really? Yeah? It was on my old badge. The one I have now is fixed.

But man, how long did it take you to notice?

I know, oh, I always know. I noticed it right away. I know this is right away. But it didn't bother me. It's so common.

How long have you been an ichth theologist? Since birth?

Since? Yeah? Since ever?

Chris has worked at the Natural History Museum of Alley County for almost twenty years, and she's been studying a specific group of little fishies for almost twenty five years. That is a long term relationship with fish. How did you fall in with this gang of fish?

The fish that I work on are called Gobi's and they are a group of reefishes and stream fishes. They're found all around the world. I fell into them completely by accident. I was fascinated with larval fish. I was fascinated with a tiny little larvae that you know are so complicated and yet and yet tiny. I was living in Hawaii, I was working on a master's degree. I was studying a larval fish called Chinlaria.

Shinlaria definitely sounds like a disease you'd pick up at a college party, but it's actually one of the smallest vertebrates in the world. So how eaty bitty is this fish? Well, it only weighs about a tenth of a gram when it's fully grown. So it's everywhere in the Pacific and in the Indian oceans. And the common name for it is stout infant fish, which I feel like is a really good insult if you're feeling fancy, So okay, if they're so tiny, how do you even see them?

And it's just like a clear little shimmer in the water. When I went out to catch them, I asked a guy who knew about these fish what they look like, and he said, go down in the water and look for the shimmer like steam rising off a boiler pan.

That's how you find these things.

Yep. You go out there, you pull a net through that shammer and you come up with shin laria. Or you can go out at night and just pull a plankton net. So I did a lot of night plankton.

Work INAII in Hawaii. Did that not suck?

It was the best, except for the time that I almost hit a whale.

What happened.

It was nighttime, but there was just like a whale and her calf kind of parked in this channel, and I was trying to go out, and you know, when it's dark, you don't really see the black shape of a whale in the water. It's difficult. I did not hit the whale. Let me be clear. I did not hit the whale or the whale calf. But you know, it's a federal crime to touch a whale.

So is it illegal to touch a whale? Appears to be an affirmative. So it's illegal to feed or attempt to feed any species of marine mammal. Now in some states it's illegal to even approach whales within a few hundred meters, so essentially operate as though all whales have restraining orders against you. So it's not illegal, however, to look at pictures of them and dream about them, and I wonder if they're thinking of you too. But whales are fish, So back to fish. Were you always into fish? Well?

I was, And as I said, I was working on this fish called Shinlaria. And it turned out at the time it was not known. It was so weird that it wasn't known what kind of fish. It was a real yeah, no one knew that. There were some theories, but it was like, what is this weird thing? And I thought, oh, you know, everything's fine as long as it's not a gobe. Because gobi's were so complicated. There's so many, there's thousands of species, it's a huge group.

So you were like, please don't be a gobe.

And then it was a goobe and then it was like Psyche, the universe is like psych You're gonna work on the hardest group of fishes there is. Suck it up.

Maybe the world needed you, fish needed you.

It's one of those things that turned that was absolutely terrifying and turned out to be the best possible answer because Gobi's are so fascinating and variable. They do anything like any evolutionary thing you want to study, a gobi is doing it pretty much.

Did you have fish growing up as pets?

I did. That's how That's how I got into I think that's what started this madness because I remember when I was just a little kid, maybe five years old, like staring into a fish tank. We had some little little you know, ras boras or sort of little darter fish in the tank and just staring at it and like being sort of frightened because I couldn't understand how this little tiny thing could be alive and like breathing water.

Did you study biology and stuff in high school as well?

I studied biology in high school. Yes, And I went away to college and I thought, I've always been very analytical. I love math, I love physics, chemistry. I was gonna study chemistry. And I remember sort of that I had taken you know, natural history classes in college and taken chology and ize into it, and I started learning about fish. And then when I decided to go to get a master's in Hawaii, that the deal was pretty sealed. But I sort of remember this as a college time conversion.

What.

Yes, there was a signature. There were like three different people who sort of hope you have a good times learning about fish. One and said, oh, you know, enjoy it. I'm sure someday you'll be ichthologists to the stars.

And here you are in Los Angeles, right ologists.

I was like goal achieved.

I wanted to fact check and see if there were any celebrity ichthyologist or like fish people to the stars, And the closest competition I found was these two guys who run an aquarium business in Las Vegas and have a reality show, which took me to a surreal clip of Tracy Morgan appreciated biodiversity. I love exotic animals, and there's there's some people that don't even know that these animals live with.

Us here on a planet.

It keeps me from watching TV.

I like to watch the animals sometimes. Let's back up and can you tell me what a fish is?

Okay? A fish is a vertebrate, which means it has a bony skeleton with a backbone. It's a vertebrate that lives in the water. That's about well, that's about it, although it obviously doesn't include some water living vertebrates like whales.

Fishes breathe water.

They don't have lungs. They're part of a clade called the bony fishes are part of a clade called ACTIONOPTERIDGII.

Okay, what was that word acting after agi, which means ray finn fishes. It kind of sounds like the first line of a camp song, like the sequel to John Janngle Jimberheimer Schmidt. Right, Okay, back to it.

Which describes some characters of like the way the fins are arranged some kind of details of the bones, but basically they're a vertebrate animal in the water.

That's not a whale.

That's not a whaler, a dolph and right, or a seal okay, or a snake right, or human being m you know what I mean, or your dog at the beach.

Exactly as soon as you have a backbone or in the water, you become a fish. Well, no, I would like to think so. So this is a very I mean going back to like when you were a kid and you were marveling at the tank. This is such a basic question. But how to fish breathe?

It is?

It is?

That's not a basic question. That was a complicated Okay. Gases, so they need oxygen. They're like us. They need oxygen to run their cells. They absorb oxygen from the water, but that's more difficult than absorbing oxygen from the air. Although remember our lungs are wet like air, we also absorb oxygen from water. It's just a thin scrim of water inside a lung.

Oh hey, heads up, you got moist as hell lungs now, you know.

But fishes have a very frilly complicated blood enriched gill sort of filament looks like feathers, like a filament. Well, you've seen them on an axilotte right just inside the head. And the purpose of that is to exchange have a lot of surface area, exchange with water and oxygen diffuses from the water into the blood.

Okay, So then what is the deal with a fish bladder?

Okay, so you mean a swim last, swim swim blast. Yeah, fishes have swim bladders, well not all, but most of them, and those are for regulating buoyants. He because remember, fishes live in sort of three D. They move side to side, they move forward and back, but they also move up and down. Oh yeah, you know, compared to the fishes, we're sort of just like in flat land, Like we move like just in a few directions. But fish are actually basically always.

Flying underwater, never wearing pants, flying without ever falling. I'm like, oh, okay, I get it. Like fish have the best lives. They have the best lives. They also have swim bladders which fill with gas and floats them up and down kind of like a functional whoope cushion.

Most of the time. And it's there are also some types of fishes that can actually gulp air and put it into their swim bladers. But obviously that's not going to work for a fish that lives, you know, one hundred feeple of surface. So there's two different kinds.

Do you have a favorite strata of fish, like in terms of pelagic or and I will will have to remember and look up again, like what the zones are, but like in terms of ocean zones. Yeah, okay, quick quick rundown of ocean zones, just in case you're ever at a bar trivia night and you need to impress your coworkers or your new significant other siblings. Okay, The ocean zones are roughly epipolagic at the top, these parts get sunlight, so plants grow there. The majority of ocean

I am It's I'm super basic. I like the near shore stuff. I like the shallow water stuff. I like the coral reef stuff. I like the inshore up into the streams. I'm getting into river fishes more. And it's interesting because most of life on the planet is right around the earth, the air water interface, right like near coast, close to the ocean, and then you know, right right around there is most of the air, terrestrial life and bird life. I mean, you start to get too high

I've never really thought about that, just thought, I guess cool, Yeah, that's crazy.

You know why I was thinking that because I was I was driving down pH and I was looking at one thing I never tire of. Is this the glint of the sunlight off the water, and it looks like a skin. And I was thinking about the skin of the water and how it looks like a solid thing and how everything lives. You know, the closer to that, the better MM hmm.

Do you go to the ocean a lot living in LA because I know we're near downtown and I get to the ocean like once a year. Like, how are do you surf every morning? Are you most in there? No?

No, No, I don't usually if I'm going into the ocean, I'm working.

Okay, do you what kind of what is a day like for you?

Well, right now, I'm just in the office. So it's a lot of like some of its lab work, some of its spreadsheets, some of its emails. Sometimes I have to photograph things. I've been writing a lot lately, which is really nice. I have if I'm traveling a lot of times I will travel to visit museum collections or visit colleagues, and in that case, I will go into someone else's collection and look at the jars of fish and take fish out and examine them and look at

I've never been diving. But what does it feel like down there? Does it feel like freedom, does it feel like cozy.

Feels like you're flying? Yeah, it's cold, I'll say that it's cold and you have to, you know, wear a wetsuit, wear a drysuit, be careful. But it is the thing that people often don't realize is that when you're in the water completely submerged for a long time, the water really sucks the heat out of your body. So you gotta you gotta be thermally insulated. That's why you often see divers wearing big suits.

Is it true that divers and surfers do pee in them?

I get asked this skill lot.

I'm sorry, and those okay.

This is why I would say, I say this is like, it's like peeing in the shower. It's like, you can't honestly say that it never happens. I couldn't, like I couldn't like look you in the eye and swear to you that I've never done it. But I try to keep it to a minimum. I would do it. I mean the fisher doing it, the fisherre doing it, Yeah, but the fish. It doesn't get trapped on the fish's body.

Okay, good to know. I appreciate the candor that isn't that is a question that would have plagued me. I would have been driving home being like I wish I would ask that makes it feel better, okay. Saltwater fish freshwater fish. I think we don't think about it until it comes time to have Perhaps one is a pet and you're like, oh, if you have a saltwater aquarium, you are a millionaire.

It's a whole different thing.

Yeah, if you have a bowl with a fish in it that costs a dollar. Like, what is the what is the difference in how they live and how they breathe and exist, the difference in how.

It has to do with osmo. What's called osmo regulation, which is the regulation of salt basically in your body and outside your body. So the kidney, you know, pumps salt one way or the other. Freshwater fishes live in a situation where they've got too much salt relative to the freshwater around them. Saltwater fishes have less salt than the water around them, so they just have to be careful with their kidneys. Some of them go back and forth.

Wow, you know, I never knew. I always thought like once they got to a brackish zone, they'd be like, I'm out of here. Some do okay. Yeah, I've seen salmon spawning in a stream, and I've always wondered, like, clearly that makes them so vulnerable to predation if you wanted sashimi was just like any of them. I mean, how screwed are they when they do that?

Well, I mean you've seen the bears. Yeah, just scooping them, just scooping them up. Just watch them, just watch them go by, grabbing them one by one. There's a lot of them. Yeah, and some of them make it and some of them don't. But a lot of them make it.

Right, they're like by good luxia, Yeah, have fun.

Yeah, okay, okay bye.

See. Also, the enormous Catholic broods on either side of my family lineage, so many. It's like some of them will probably be fine when it comes to the little guys. You study a lot of little guys. You showed me some cool specimens. Is that also a numbers game? I mean they're kind of are they kind of lower on the food chain, right, it's kind.

Of a it's a value laden term. It's evaluating.

Sorry, Yes, yes they are.

They are. It's their food for a lot of other things, it's true. Yeah, And there's a lot of them. There's a lot of them. There's so the larger group that they're a part of is maybe twenty, say, twenty five hundred species, and the total number of bony fishes is like twenty five thousand, so that little more so that's ten percent of fishes right there.

How many fish species have been identified.

So, like I said, twenty twenty six thousand in that ballpark. Yeah, there's more all the time. People are finding more all the time, and there's more out there we don't know about it. I mean, there might be fifty thousand out there that we just haven't we haven't gotten them yet.

And you just walked me through the collections. You have five million specimens here in jars.

Yep, where do you get the jars? Well, you know that's a good th't that's a very good question. You know, if you're talking about like a straight eight to squad eight, you want a gallon, you want a big hinge one with a lid that's different different places, But a general bottle in here in Los Angeles, cells, cells jars.

Okay, curiosity and procrastination got the better of me and I googled general bottle supply. Why not? It's legit. Now, if you ever get lost in a catalog of jars, whoo short tall amber, cobalt blue lidded, narrow boy, howdie woo jar heaven, this will change at least one of your lives out there. I'm convinced. Do you ever have to take like donations like hey, if anyone's got any big pickle jugs like.

Drop off, that's exactly what we don't like to do only because the you know, let me tell you the problem is not the jar, it's the lid. Oh, glass jar is a glass jar. You gotta think about your closure to some serious collection management. Gotta get that lid nice and tire. You wanted to have a nice liner. It's important.

Oh or else you've got all kinds of evaporation happening exactly, Okay, Now what happens when and say an oar fish washes up side note? An oor fish is this long, long, long, like sometimes up to eleven meters or over thirty feet. That's like a three story building, long, bony, snaky looking fish that lives in temperate or tropical waters. Now, when they're sick or dying, they tend to come up to the surface just to be like it's the end. So they're at the surface, and they fueled all these old

Do you want to come get it? Do you want it? We've had stuff wash up, you know, or fish, sharks, various things. Sometimes fishermen will catch some weird thing and they'll call us and we'll go get it, and then we'll like, we have you. There's some pictures on my I have an Instagram account at sackfish t J A C K Fish then that I post like behind the scenes fish's stuff. And one of the pictures on there is us prepping the oar fish, so great big fish.

I love that fish.

It's a great fish.

I mean I used to be as a volunteer. I would get stationed there a lot.

Did you really did you know that? You know, so you know how it has those long oars? Did you notice that one of them is broken? And our collection manager had to like plastic surgery fix it with a drinking straw, with like a piece of drinking straw. It was a little bit of like mortuary, you know. Body, yes, yeah, body preparation for display I've.

Heard that there's I just heard that there's an ology for that of the It's like cosmetology and pantatology combined. By there must be I must get what it's called. But I didn't know anyone did that for or fish. By the bye, that ology is desirology, and I just want to give props to Meghan Rosenbloom of Death Salon for the heads up on that. Also. I used to volunteer at the museum talking to kids about this ar fish,

Irl? Something called a hulafish?

What is it?

Okay? A hula fish is a small refish that lives in Australia and it is only found in Australia. And I'd never heard of it. I've never seen it. And there's just like a couple of years ago, I'm sending fish all this time and I've done in a crime in Sydney and I saw this fish in the tank and I had no idea what it was like, no idea, And that's.

A weird feeling, right given you know what I do. And I just stared at as.

Stared and start and it was like I was five again looking at this tank, going how is this possible? What is this alien thing? Yeah? Hulafish freaky looking and it looks like nothing. It's a little got blue and white stripes, but it moves in a very sinuous way like a hula answer, hence the name.

And that's where they got it exactly. I saw a video and a hula fish does have moose? Have you ever gotten to name the fish.

Oh yeah, I have named several fish.

How do you do? Where do you come up with it?

Uh?

Let's see. One of them I named for the color. One of it I named for the locality. There's one that i'm naming right now that I just showed you that I'm naming for the guy who worked on it, Midgley.

Do you get to name anything after yourself.

That's considered poor form? Okay, yeah, that's Gonta the perform I have three seasons named after me by people.

Oh my god. So if you have a fish named after you, it's because someone else is like ding, you deserve this, But if you do it, you do yourself.

You're a douche. I never that.

Oh my god, that's so great.

You got it if you really can. I mean, and if you really care about such things, you just make a deal with your buddy, like you know. But people don't even really do that. I mean, that's again, that's like, that's pretty, that's tacky.

I had no idea. Are there any that have been named recently where you know they'll name one after like David Bowie or I don't know.

There's a genus of Gobi's called Zappa Oh really, Yeah, that's a while that's from a while ago.

How I wonder why did he get a because.

The guy who studied them love Frank Zappa Boom. And the awesome thing is it's a mud skipper. Do you know what that is? No, these crazy amphibious fish they have. They have these googly eyes on top of their head that they can like suck back down, these little water cups and their faces they come out of the water.

Yeah, that's like half the size of a candy bar.

They're far, they're itty bitty, and they're ferocious, ferocious.

Do you have a favorite fish?

I have several favorite fish. Have you ever seen a wahoo? It's beautiful. It's beautiful a way, who is kind of like a tune. It's a great, big, silvery pelagic fish, and it's just spectacular. It looks like a torpedo. It's like a silvery torpedo. I really like mud skippers. I like shrimp phobe. Some of the shrimp gobies I work on are just beautiful, very delicate, you know, colorful fishes, and they do all kinds of weird things.

So, yeah, what's the what's their relationship with shrimp?

Shrimp? Gobi's live with shrimp and burrows. The shrimp builds the burrow and the gobi lives with the shrimp. So it's a symbiotic relationship, like a mutualistic relationship. They help each other.

Oh my god, they're like Burton nerdy, they are.

And gobi's actually do this a lot. There's gobies that live in sponges and sea urchins and you know, all kinds of different places. They like, they're friendly, they like to participate in mutualisms. And a goby and a sh shrimp will the gobi is actually the watch dog. So the shrimp is blind. Oh this is this a great story. The shrimp is a blind This is nature, this is evolution, this is just all This is our world we live. This is a planet we live on with these things,

Have you guys been able to figure out what different flicks mean?

Well, not exactly, but you can see them. If you watch them, which I have done many many hours doing, you'll see the gobie like one hard flick is basically there's danger, and oftentimes the Gobi and the shrimp when they're sitting together, they just the gobey will move a little bit and the shrimp will you know, keep in touch. But it's real gentle like they'll almost kind of sing, yeah, it's okay, it's okay, it's okay, it's okay, like little little gentle movements.

I just got goosebumps, like the full body goosebumps. That's crazy. That's bananas now is that language? When?

Yeah, that's language? Oh yeah for shirts language? Of course they're communicating.

God, that's nuts.

They're rare in collections because they're very, very difficult to catch.

Are they just too quick?

They're very quick?

So then do you have to just have certain nets like you were saying, plankedon nets or set up traps?

That doesn't work. Actually, you have to use a spear gun, a spear gun. You have to use a spear gun. It's it's this crazy complicated way. You have to go down there with a spear gun. You fit the spear gun out with like a blade or a like a pented dent like prongs, so it's like almost like a shovel, and the sand is very loose, and the goby's very fast and very good at its job. And you what

Oh my god, So you might be doing that all day.

Oh my gosh. Yeah, it's very difficult.

I have the dumbness question. Please dinosaurs, Right, we've got a meteor boom, dinosaurs, goodbye. Fish under water the whole time, so they were just chill and fine. There were losses, okay, there were losses, okay.

But not to the extent that the terrestrial anomurs animals suffered in the Cretaceous Tertiary extinction. The media that killed the dinosaurs did affect fishes. In fact, it killed a lot of the bigger predatory fishes, larger sort of top of the food chain fishes. There was an event a lot earlier, at the n Permium extinction that that was much worse for oceans. So it was just a different

Okay. So there was the n permium and then there was the cape kk yeah exactly. Okay, Yeah, I didn't know the difference between them. Thank you very much of that. I'm sure people ask you this day in and day out. Do you eat fish?

Yes? I do eat fish, Okay, for fish, I always recommend this is and it's serious. I mean, this is one again one of those things we got to watch out for. What the ocean. Don't eat most kinds of wild cott tuna, do not eat orange roughy. For your convenience, you can go to seafood watch dot org. Okay, and the Monterey Bay Aquarium has a list and it's always changing. They're always updating it. But a lot of farmed fishes fine to eat. You know, it's it's done responsibly, you know,

Certainly, Okay, I didn't know about that. Ye what about fish? Fish is getting it on? There's some weird, weird behavior any that you tell people at cocktail parties.

Well, a lot of the gobies that I study are sex changers. What, yes, they will start out a lot of them, the ones, some of the ones that live right off our coast are start their lives. They're all born as females, and then the biggest one turns into a male. Yeah, no way, and it kind of runs the hair. And then if he dies, the next biggest female turns into a male. And there's ones that go the other way too that they're all male except for a big female.

How do they do that?

It's just it's just like you know, the freshwater saltwater. They have a really good kidney, you know, male and female. They have a really flexible gonad and it just changes.

Do they have an X and Y chromosome?

They do, Yeah, they have a system that's similar to ours. But the thing is is that, I mean, remember a female, female's the ground state. I mean, being male is kind of like a like an extra little birth defect that gets like hammered on there at the end. And so turning turning a female going and turning too a male going is what happens to all human males.

Oh hey, uh, misogynists boo.

Yeah, right, Yeah, you can switch it. The gonuts come from the same tissues. You can switch them back and forth.

That's true. I forget that. So the biggest one I wonder if they do it by by will? Are they like boop? Okay, here I go.

Yeah, yeah, they start to feel it, they start to feel it.

Boom oh unbelievable everyone, And you know everyone always talks about the anglerfish. Yeah, the male just kind of grows into the female.

Yeah.

Is that a good one for cocktail parties?

Oh?

Yeah, people people know that. They're like, you know, the only problem is people know that one. Now that's kind of old news.

Okay, to sum up the lore of the anglerfish in a few seconds, here we go very unsightly but majestic deep sea lady anglerfish has this glowing, dankled angle on her head and a vicious underbite with these jagged ass teeth. And the male is tiny and he could barely feed himself with his little baby mouth. So he finds a lady anglerfish and he gnaws into her side, thus dissolving his lips and her flesh and fuses them into one, and then he just kind of feeds off nutrients in

I'm trying to think about what is a cool fish fact. I talk about mud skippers, which are crazy that they're fish.

I read one story about how there's some oh god, now I can't remember, some fish who holds her eggs in her mouth.

Oh yeah, cardinalfish. Cardinalfish do it. Jawfish do it. Is fantastic. They will go sick lits. Sickle fishes, which you might know from aquaria, will sometimes to do it. It's just a way to keep the eggs safe.

And then sometimes I've heard that a man will trick a man. A male fish will trick a female fish into thinking there's food. She opens her mouth and then he just is like, surprise, just surprise, I've fertilized your mouth. Does that happen.

What usually happens is that the eggs, yeah, it can. Well, Usually what happens is the eggs can't fertilize right away either, because she'll lay the eggs. He'll fertilize them and she'll scoop them up, or she'll scoop them up and then he'll fertilize them in her mouth. You can picture that, right, Yeah, sure, it's biology. It's not bad.

We don't judge, I mean, but the main thing with fish is you've got to make a lot of babies hope they survive exactly exactly.

And the idea is that the lower the amount of care that you put into your babies, the more you've got to have. Right, So, like if you're just gonna blow them out too the wind, like a seed or fish egg, you know, into the water, you gotta have a bunch of them. If you're gonna take care of them,

Is that just like holding eggs out of a moving car and you just see.

It's like you salt the fields just everywhere.

Although sharks have those cool sacks.

Yeah, sharks, sharks are have some lay eggs like that, and some actually have live young and some fish have live young too. They have a few live young, but it's rare.

And sharks are fish. Sharks are fish? Does that ever trip people up? I always feel like sharks are in their own category because people are there. They have such a different place in society than the rest of the fish, you know.

Well, and they aren't different. I mean, they are a different evolutionary group than fishes, that's true, but they are you know, And like I said, most people the general term fish. They just think, oh, it's a vertebrate animal that lives in the water, and they're maybe not anything vertebrate, but like you know, an animal like us with like heads and a back and limbs and eyes. So yeah, sharks fall into that category.

In that case, I have so many questions from listeners. Oh and I rapid fire please Okay, but before we take questions from you, our beloved listeners, we're going to take a quick break for sponsors of the show. Sponsors. Why sponsors? You know what they do? They help us give money to different charities every week. So if you want to know where Ologies gives our money, you can go to Aliward dot com and look for the tab

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Okay, your questions all right, so I'll just rapid fire, okay, as quick as you can answer great, although sometimes I know these are complicated questions.

Okay, okay.

Greg wants to know how has climate change affected fish species and fish populations across the world, and how are plastic and other pollution affecting fish biology and health.

Number one, fishes are moving like we will see things off the coast California, we never used to see because they came from warmer waters to the south. So with fishes that can move, our moving in response to climate change. What is plastic? Very very bad? The number one thing that I would say to people when they say to me, what can I do sort of for the planet and for the oceans, is watch it with your plastic. Keep

I went to Hawaii. I got to go for a job and I got to see I know. I was mostly in hotels and in donut shops. It was it's a weird job, but I but I walked by the marina and it looked like a beautiful aquarium and like a Durrito's bag just floated by, and I was like, this is a picture of dystopia. What have we done?

Plastic is very bad and it bugs me, bugs me like emotionally like it upsets me. So yes, please, please people, be careful with your plastic. Just recycle it. It's not even that hard. Just recycle it. Just recycle it. That's all I.

Ask once again, recycle it. If you're like everything is bad? What do I do? I feel you? I feel you? So I looked it up. According to Greenpeace, here are some other ways you can cut down on plastics. You can carry a reusable bottle. We use a bunch of bottles all the time. You can say no to plastic straws, say no to disposable cutlery. You can avoid things with microbeads and carry a shopping bag. Look at that boom. You're already a better person, better than you were fifteen

Yay.

I also asked doctor Thacker in an email later something I forgot to address. It's regarding flesh colored, rope looking slimeballs which feed on decaying matter, which I hear is spectacularly gross to witness. So has she ever seen a hagfish eating it a whale? She said, I have never personally seen a hagfish eating a whale. But they do scavenger those carcasses down in the deep, and it's busy. Mainly they really go at it. Lots of hagfish flailing,

Absolutely, yes, absolutely. And one of the beautiful things about the ocean and working, you know, with fish and thinking about fisheries and climate change and whatever, and you know, even horrible scary things like coral bleaching, is that if we take action the problem, it will help, the problem will get better. Fisheries are rebounding that that have been protected, so it's definitely worth it.

Is there a hope for coral reefs?

Yes?

Okay, yes, oh good, Yes, it is.

It is. It is. It is a failure of will. It is not a failure. It's not that we don't know what to do. What we need to do is watch it with the carbon emissions. It's just that we don't have the will to do it. But if we were to take care and you know, cut that down, we would we would see some recovery in the coral reefs. I have no doubt you never hear about the ozone hole anymore. Remember that word. Yeah, yeah, and that's because that's because CFC's got banned and it hell and boom problem solved.

Oh good to know that's actually that gives me a lot of hope. Mm hmmm. Michael Satambaga asks, throwing some shade here, why does some tilapia taste like mud while others don't.

It depends on what it's eating and how it's farmed. But yeah, he's right, And like some cafesh you taste tastes terrible. You want to you want to go eat an alligator. You want to get yourself a farmed alligator. Don't eat a wild alligator because they just eat garbage and like pig carcasses. It's yucky ool.

I didn't know that same problem with salapi. Do the farmed ones just eat like cereal and stuff?

They do? Yeah, they're like you know, and they have like you know, alligator spa days and they eat good food.

I'm sure I couldn't seem to find out what farmed alligators eat, but I did manage to find some Southern swamp boat captain hopping out in a muscle tank top into the bog water and feeding alligators marshmallows out of his mouth. And now I know that hell exists. H Jenna Kawala Calton. I say her name wrong every time I read it. Jenna. Okay, this is a I once heard this when I was twelve things. But can fish not feel pain or do they just have short memories?

This is a common misconception, and the answer is, of course they feel pain. Of course they feel pain fish. You have to feel pain. Otherwise when a predator starts running at you, you wouldn't feel it and you just get eaten. So yes, they do feel pain.

How are their memories?

Well, probably not that great. Okay, but I mean, let's just you know what, let's just not hurt fish, right, Yeah, don't make them feel pain. Don't make them feel pain. Why do they need to feel pain?

What kind of brains do they have?

They have brains like ours, but simpler, but the same basic the same basic you know road map, same basic nerves, same basic vertebrate brain, So.

They can feel pain. I'm sorry fish. Joe wants to know there are some highly weird species in the deep ocean. Do you have a favorite one you like to bring up at parties, which I think I just asked you this.

Sorry, Joe, No, that's okay. The deep sea fish is. The thing about deep sea fish is that's hilarious is that most of them are small.

Oh yeah, really a little if.

I just yesterday I was looking at a fossil, beautiful fossil of something called a hatchet fish, and there's one about the size of a silver dollar in our collection. It's got these beautiful little light organs and crazy teeth like even a You know, your average angler fish is not going to be any bigger than your fist, oh for the most part, and you're sort of toothy dragonfish looking thing. You know, those might be I don't know, those might be the size of a hot dog, maybe

Now, Zoe Teplick wants to know aquariums, good or bad. Do fish suffer the same impact of captivity as mammals, and is a benefit of studying fish in captivity worth the harm it can cause the fish?

Well, you know, fish, It's true, fish can get bored. It's not as bad as like a polar bear, polar bear in a studio apartment. You feel sad, right for the for the polar or something like a wolf, or you know, something that requires a big territory. It's not quite that bad, but they don't like being in captivity, It's true. And the bad thing about keeping fishing captivity, as far as I'm concerned, is the pet trade. I used to keep fishing, then I stopped because I found

It's horrible.

I know.

You dynamite, you kill a bunch and then whatever's alive you take. Yeah, that seems like a terrible idea.

It is, it's it's but it's cheap and it's quick. Oh and the idea is that the percussion of the explosion, you know, can stun the fish and then the fish will float up and they just can't they swoop them up. That's terrible. Yeah, so, and that doesn't I mean, that doesn't happen everywhere all the time, but it does happen, especially for species that are in the pet trade.

What about aquariums like you know, sanctioned on a Rey Bay Aquarium. How do you feel about those? I, you know what, I like them.

And the reason is that fishes are so alien and the undersea world is so bizarre. I want people to be able to see it. I want people to look at those rock fish, look them in the eye, you know, think about the planet that they that we we share in common.

So for being ambassadors to the public exactly then. But just like a fish tank in your dentist office, a fish.

Tank in your dentists office, I mean there's and it's kind of like fish that you eat. There's fish that are farmed that are bread for captivity for pets, you know, goldfishes, all this fancy goldfish things like that. There's plenty of saltwater fishes that are that are bread in captivity. And that's fine. I mean keep again, keep keep a fish, keep a pet, look at it, appreciate it, understand it,

I never knew that was a thing. That's so mean. Yeah, Casey Hanmer wants to know why do fish have so many bones all caps? Also, why are salmon so amazing?

Fish do have a lot of bones? I mean, I suppose that's just what works for them. It's not. It's not again, it's not sort of a value judgment. The auto be flexible. They move in a lot of different directions. They have, you know, a lot of muscle motion going on. Like I said, they live in three D updown, on, side to side, back forward. And why are salmon so awesome? Yeah, you know, salmon are very old. Oh salmon, salmonoforms. It's an old group. Lot of cool things all around the world.

He wants to know. Also, why do some fish have two co dominant mating strategies, the alpha and the sneak.

That is a complicated question. Okay, what he's talking about is a male and a female fish will mate and have babies, and the male oftentimes has to expend energy to do that. He's got to show off. Maybe he makes a little territory, makes a little nest and it does a little fancy dance and the lady says, oh, that's beautiful, and then lays her eggs. If you are a sneaker male, you can get away with circumventing that.

It happens in a lot of species. Mike Millshouer wants to know do fish sleep?

They do?

They do?

They do?

Yeah?

You sometimes parrot fish will kind of you'll see them on the bottom at night. They like wrap themselves in this bubble of mucking in, nice and cozy and just lovely. And yeah, they'll they'll, you know, they doze off. I wonder if they dream they must write some big uh, you know, big plagic fishes. They'll just you know, obviously they don't go down to the bottom to sleep, but they'll just you know, they'll doze off a little bit at a time. They'll sleep in little bursts.

Yeah, I bet they have so many shark nightmares.

Oh man, I wonder, right, I wonder what that must be like.

I know, do you ever have to talk people down from sharkphobias?

Sometimes? Yeah, but most people are pretty reasonable about it.

I feel like the statistics are like so slim.

Every yeah, exactly, And at this point everyone knows that, you know, you're more likely you know, to fall off a curb and break your neck than get yeah, beaten, you get eaten by a shark.

Right, stay out of the water, I suppose, But hmm nah. Else bin Hey wants to know what kinds of fish are the most ethical? Oh to keep his pets. I love my beta fish, but whenever I'm in a pet store and see all the betas and their tiny cups, I feel sad. I want to take them all home. Should I contribute to that market or should I get a different kind of fish next time? Are beta raised in captivty?

Excellent question, and thank you for being so you know, so responsible. Yeah, betafish are raising captivity. Go ahead and have as many as you like. Okay. Yeah.

She also said, why are octopi so freaking scary? And do you think they'll take over the world? That's a question for a touthologists, right, get this?

Okay, okay, that is a very good question. Here is the reason that we are not living in servitude to our cephalopod overlords. Even the biggest giant squid only lives for five years.

What.

Yes, I just found this out.

Squids, octopuses they have very very.

Short life spans. They got to go, They got to grow up, they got a mate, They gotta get it done because they're not hanging around it. The minute I heard that, I thought, holy shit. If one of those things ever figures out and lists one hundred, we're aft, We're.

Out of here.

It's over for us.

I feel like they'd be better at computer programming than us.

Oh, it wouldn't even make computer parking. It would be like telepathic control of everything.

Yeah, do you think they're aliens?

I feel like I'm not qualified to make that assessment. It could be, it could be, Okay.

Craig wants to know how has uh oh, he wants to know how has farmed salmon, tilapia and catfish affected their species? But I feel like we kind of addressed that, right Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, farm fisher or fine. The species is fine, It's good, okay. Yeah.

Craig Minami wants to know has a discovery that southern California is a nursery for great white sharks increased your research into their habits?

Not me personally, but plenty of people. Yeah, oh yeah, this is a great place to be if you want to work on sharks. Like I said, we're getting fish up in soun of the California that used to be found much farther to the south, including hammerhead sharks. The sharks will follow the seals, I mean the big fishes follow the little fishes. They follow the prey items. So a if the seals move around, the sharks will go after him. The white sharks dang.

John Worster wants to know when a fisherman catches a fish. The hook usually goes in the lip of the fish. Do the fish feel pain when that happens? That's a yes. Yeah, he says, I don't go fish anymore, so the answer will not affect me at all.

Thank you for again, thank you for these these comments. I love because they're responsible. You know, these are these people are trying to do the right thing. They're caring, and I encourage this.

I do feel like fish are people are sensitive to fish because people know that they are getting boned with climate change. You know.

Yeah, yeah, well good, yeah, I mean that's great that I encourage that. Well done people.

Jessica Chamberlain has a personal question. She asked fish ever bite people, specifically bass or other dwelling fish. I'm trying to sett a little bit. I'm positive a fish bit me while we were swimming in Whitewater Lake in Wisconsin last summer, but my husband disagrees.

It's definitely possible to the fish bit you. It's definitely possible.

Oh, Jessica's husband, you have been proven wrong.

They'd have to be u you know, a little confused. But maybe the water's muddy, fish bumps ind you bite it? Yeah, couldppen? I mean they don't usually obviously attack things bigger than themselves. They usually eat little insects. But yeah, it's possible a fish. Goodbite you sure fish? You know, see a little see your finger.

Some take a little bite, little level. Well don't And I'm saying, yeah, yeah, she got a fish kiss.

That's exactly you shouldn't be sad about it.

Be happy. Krista Chrexler asked do seahorses actually mate for life and why do the males carry the babies. I'm basically wondering, why are seahorses so cool?

Oh my gosh, there's so many reasons. What a great group of fish those are. They do not mate for life, they'll mate with many different females throughout their life. Why does the male carry the babies? You know, I'm actually not sure they did. They've got a pouch. They do carry them around you usually, So something like that can be explained by the idea that the female can make more young because of it somehow. You know, Mason movie,

That's a great one.

Yeah, let me good question. That's a good question.

I love that she's maybe outsourcing. Yeah, you know what I mean. Side note, I have long thought that fashionable stay at home dads wearing baby porns walking kiddos down the block to the cold pressed juicery while their mom is out kicking ass should be called colloquially seahorses. What do you think, Like, Melanie's husband is a total sea horse, he's the best. Well, yeah, I quit my job at the tech firm and I'm just seahorsing for now. Well, uh,

Like do the go be in the shrimp like they? I feel like they would have to write, but I think there's no evidence of that. In fact, even fishes like fish will protect they're young if they know they're they're young. But some fishes, actually the young have to exhibit a different coloration pattern and show a different behavior just so that the adult doesn't think they're an enemy or a prayer. Oh wow, So yeah, you know, I

I mean they're cold blooded, but they're not cold hearted.

That's that's it, exactly, Ali perfectly put. I feel like, if you pair bond you can feel love. You must be able, would you yeah? Exactly.

Okay, well we've settled that. That's it.

That's solidly, scientifically settled. I'm a doctor. Now.

Alicia or Sheevil, asks what's your favorite scary or weird fish? She loves personally the wolf eel.

Just for the visual.

Wolf eels are kind of this like granite colored gray long eel normal, but when it comes to that face, they have this angry countenance of Stadler and Waldorf, those two muppets who sit in the balcony and judge everyone. They're great, please look them up. And then tattoo went on your back.

Okay, first of all, great choice. Okay, my scariest fish is related to childhood imaginary trauma. I am terrified a stonefish. Stonefish are tropical, they live in the sand, they're camouflage, they have big spines, and they're deadly venomous. W yes, and I, for some reason was terrified of stepping on a stone fish, which is kind of like being terrified of being my great white shark.

They'll never it's not gonna happen. When am I ever gonna get Probably never? So have you gotten over it?

Not really?

Oh no, when you wear what are their habitats.

Into Pacific reefs? Mostly?

Okay?

Yeah, so I just beeral careful when I'm walking around.

Do you wear like little footsy footsy booties.

Yeah, we're a little fitty. But if I'm walking, but usually I have swim and soon we'reing fins.

Okay, Well, they probably can't stab you through a fin.

No, nine, Yeah, exactly. That's the thing. It's an irrational fear.

Stone fishes, stone cold fishes.

That's it.

Aaron Kelly last questions, It says, I have a billion questions because I'm training at an aquarium. Oh well, great, thank you.

Yes, But she.

Needs to know needs to know about lumpfish. Why are they that color? I had never seen one until recently. She's fascinated, she said, specifically the teal color, and why are they jelly like? And why do they make good caviar? What is a lumpfish?

Oh she's talking about Okay, all.

Right, So Aaron's talking about a fish called Cyclopteris lumpus, which come on that name, the name wins. They're also called lump suckers, which is another a plus insult in a pinch when you can't swear. So they must have healthy self esteems to deal with the name. But can you imagine if our species was called like a lump ape? How savage is that lumpfish or like whatever? Anyway, they are lumpy and they suck things, and the caviar is expensive,

I don't know that much about though, So so yeah, I was there's a lumpfish that lives off the coast here that's really cute and bright orange, which in this you know, in our cal forest, that's kind of a camouflage color. But yeah, this one lumpish caviar I'm not sure.

I gotta look it up.

Yeah, look it up.

If do you have any advice for someone who is who is trying to be an chthyologist? Learn how spellet Yeah?

Learn has spell a number one? Yeah? Learn? Take a lot of biology classes. You know, go take as much organism biology as you can and get out in the ocean as much as you can and swim and die. Learn to die. If you want to be a professional marine biologist, learn how to dive. Get good at it.

Oh yeah, I have never been diving, but I have someone who's listener who offered to take me diving.

It's amazing.

Okay, should I go?

Yeah, you should totally go.

Yeah.

Oh yeah, it's amazing. But if you need there's if you need to work, you know, doing it for work, you gotta really like you study it, you gotta mean it. Yeah, yeah, you gotta study it. But just but but it's wonderful. Definitely go diving.

What do you hate about your job? What are you like? This part sucks?

Like what? I have an easy, easiest answer. Okay, malaria in a word, malaria. I got malaria in the field one time.

It sucked and in fact I didn't I had the kind of I caught its tropical malaria, and it was the kind of malaria where it can go you get infected, it can go in your liver and hide. And so I didn't actually know I had malaria until like ten months later. I'm like in my house reading a book, and all of a sudden there was a spike in one hundred and four degree fever and like shaking, like I was having a seizure. Horrible, no idea what was going on. My husband spotted it right.

Away, and did is he a scientist?

Yeah? He he troubles. He's a marinebil just als, so he studies snail, so he troubles with me. He was in field with me. Oh yeah, he's gone. We do all our field work together. And I went to the doctor and I tried to explain to them that I had malaria. But you later in Los Angeles, they thought it was crazy.

What did they think it was?

They thought I was nuts. They thought I had the flu, They thought I had maybe I had meningitis. And then you can to diagnose malaria, they have to take a blood sample while the parasite's active, while you're having the fever, while you're having the shaking, and that happened at night. I had to go to the emergency room. They didn't believe me. They were like, you're insane. I said, please, please, please,

But did you get just the shit bitten out of you when you were there?

Yeah, it's horrible. There's so much malaria in New Guinea. And we had take and I was taking anti millarials, but I wasn't taking strong enough ones. There are some really strong ones that also tend to cause psychosisops And yeah, you can't be being psychotic when you're diving. You'll get killed. You'll get you get killed, or you'll kill someone else. Oh my god, Oh that's not a good pair. So I took a chance roll the dice loss ended up with malaria.

There.

It is worst thing about my job.

Malaria. Did you how long are you out with malaria?

Once you take the meds, it goes away right away.

Okay, yeah, so you'd easy to treat. You don't get to like binge on a season of anything. Oh my god, no god, all for the love of fish worth it. What do you love of your job? What's the best best, best, best, best.

Best best best part? And there are so many. It is a great job. It's just figuring these things out. I love learning about the fish. I love figuring out their evolution. I love figuring out how the evolution of fishes correspond to the evolution of the planet and through geologic time. I love the work I do popularizing science. I love, you know, doing the Curiosity show on our on our YouTube channel. I love posting all the behind the scenes stuff on Instagram. I love the people I

Where are you off to next?

Well, next, I'm going to Actually I'm going to London, which is just for collections work, and then in the fallow be going back to Australia to work on some of the Australian stream fishes that are there.

Oh my god, do you how long are you in Australia when you're when you're working the usually like a month or two. Do you come back with an accent?

No? No, No, Let's see what I come back with. I came back with an appreciation for frions and meat pies and totally blase by kangaroos, blase about that whatever.

They're so meta everywhere. Yeah, what's free on a friand.

Is a kind of muffin. It's a little baked muffin. It's made out of almonds. It's really good.

Why do we have them here?

Get on me? Yeah, I don't know. Colokies show people pick this up. Freons they're so.

Good, you guys, you guys, come on, why aren't we all eating freons. They're derived from French Financier cookies and

You can? Well, I'm on our westside NHM dot org. I do a little behind the scenes show called the Curiosity Show, which is at NHM dot org slash Curiosity Show. I'm on Instagram and Twitter as thacfish thhackfish thackfish and yeah, come and come visit the museum, you know, come look at our exhibits, come look around, take it behind the scenes store. Maybe I'll show you our collection.

Oh my gosh, yeah, seriously, if anyone has it's like a love of fish. I took a tour at the NHM and ended up volunteering here and like, I can't tell you, it was a life changer. So if there's a museum nearby, sign up to volunteer. It's one of the best things I've ever done.

Oh, it's wonderful. Yes, I agree, completely, absolutely, come.

On down, totally change my life. Thank you so much for doing this.

Oh you're so welcome. My pleasure, my pleasure at joy Yeah, Gobi's.

Ugh, how obsessed with her? Are you right? I'm like fully so follow her on the platforms. Catch the Curiosity Show on YouTube and to follow Ologies, We're at Ologies on Instagram and Twitter. I'm at Ali ward one L on Twitter Instagram. You can join the Ologies Facebook group where we all talk about the episode. We share weird links and gross pictures. It's a wonderful group of folks. No one in there is a clotwad which I love.