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Oh hello, it's your etcric Aunt and your Internet dad. Alli Ward we're back with an episode of Smologies. Sosmologies are these classic Ologies episodes, but we cut them down and make them shorter, and we edit them for the language so that they are kids safe and classroom appropriate
and parents don't yell at me. Now, if you've never listened to the full version of this episode about fish and you're not around impressionable ears, it's linked right in the show notes for grown ups, the longer one it's there for you.
Go straight to that.
But if you're down for a family friendly, shorter version, this episode of Smologies.
Is for you also.
Quickly, before I get into it, I'm going to be at WENDERCN in Anaheim. Ever heard of Wonder Con. It's an Anaheim. It's on Friday, March twenty fourth. I'll be there leading a panel that's Friday, March twenty fourth, twenty twenty three, six pm Friday, a panel about climate change and art with my friends from the organization Functional Magic, who make these awesome collectible climate solutions gig posters, and I've interviewed my friend Andy Hall, who started the organization before.
I'll link that in the show notes two. But they donate proceeds to Rainforest charities, So I'll be there. If you're at Wonder Con, come to our panel Friday at six pm and say hi, Okay, now ichthyology smologies.
Ooh, this is a good one.
So I was giddy to talk face to face about fish. First, the etymology of ichthyology pretty straightforward. Ichthys means fish in Greek. It also sounds like a cat sneezing, like ichthys.
Do it?
Do it right now? Ex 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 thing with museums. What you see on display is the tiniest fraction of what they really have. So much is kept in the back in libraries and warehouses. Is like a catalog for research. So we pulled up
some chairs in this little library and this ologist. Honestly, she has the regal presence of Robin Wright, but she has the timing of a comedian, and she has the obsessive fish knowledge of a savant. And I just could not get over her. I couldn't get over her. It was like, you're amazing. So you'll learn about the touching relationship between a fish and a shrimp that I want to write a quiet indie movie about what seafood you should not eat and how you can save the planet.
You and me. So we cover a lot of ground in By ground, I mean ocean. So let's dive in with ichthyologist doctor Chris Backero.
Alogy, minology, knowlogy.
So you are an ichthyologist, that's right. I study fish. How long have you been an ichthyologist? Since birth?
Since? Yeah? Since ever.
Chris has worked at the Natural History Museum of Valley 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.
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, Gobi's are so fascinating and variable. They do anything like any evolutionary thing you want to study, a gobe is doing it. Pretty much.
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. The bony fishes are part of a claye called actionopterigii. Okay, what was that word?
Acting after a gi, which means ray finned fishes. It kind of sounds like the first line of a camp song, like the sequel to John Janle 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 dolphin right or a seal okay, or a snake right or human being or human you know what I mean or your dog at the beach.
Exactly, as soon as you have a backbone r in the water, you become a fish. Well no, I would like to think so, so this is a 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 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 ax a lode.
So an ax a lottle is a great word. It's also a type of salamander and it's lungs they look like frills on the side of its head.
Kind of like it's.
Wearing two feathery fans where our ears would be. It's majestic, it's slimy, it's glamorous. Axilettls are amazing. Well, fish have that kind of thing, but on the inside.
Yeah, 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? Bladd 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 points. 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 bladders, but obviously that's not gonna work for a fish that lives, you know, one hundred feet ble of surface. So there's two different.
Kinds, 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, I you have a bowl with a fish in it that costs a dollar. What is the difference in how they live and how they breathe and exist?
The difference in how it has to do with osmo. It's called osmo regulation, which is their regulation of salt basically in your body and outside your body. So the kidney, you know, pump 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. What oh yeah, well salmon, right, salmon go down, They go up the river, they have their babies, they wash back down, they live some time in the ocean, they switch back. Lots of go do this too? Really? Yeah, how do they do that? They're kidneys? That's how 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. 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. And also you know, a lot the ones that do make it, they'll have hundreds and thousands of eggs and so's.
That's kind of how fishes deal most of the time with the lottery of having children, is that they have a whole bunch and just hope that some survive. Right, they're like, by good luck, sia, yeah, have fun, yeah, okay, okay, bye, good luck and farewell.
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 lating term. It's evaluating. Sorry 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. What's the craziest fish you've ever seen?
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'm 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 mooves.
Do you have a favorite fish? I have several favorite fish. Have you ever seen a wahoo?
It's beautiful, It's beautiful.
A wahoo 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 mund skippers. I like shrimp goobi. Some of the shrimp gobies I work on are just beautiful, a very delicate, you know, colorful. Fish is do all kinds of weird things.
So, yeah, what's their relationship with shrimp?
Shrimp? Goby'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 gobi's 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 shrimp will the gobi is actually the watch dog, so the shrimp is blind. Oh this is this is a great story. The shrimp is 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, which is kind of like just blows my mind. This is fishes. I think of my fishes every day with that sort of tone like, this is on our planet
with us. Are these creatures? So shrimps and gobi's. The shrimp is blind, the goby watches, sits on the bottom and watches and is a guard dog. The little shrimp builds the burrow and takes care of the burrow, and they are in touch with each other. They communicate via a tactile communication system, a touch system. What the antennae of the shrimp are very long, and the antennae of
the shrimp. As the shrimp, you know, scrumples around and works, it keeps in contact with the gobi's body, and the gobi will flick its tail or move or dart back and forth to let the shrimp know what's going on if there's danger, if you can come out no way condumer cent. True.
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 with 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 fish is fine to eat.
You know it's done responsibly, you know, eq logically conscious. And you can also check and see if it's if the seafood that you're buying is MSc certified miss Marine Stewardship Council.
So okay, I didn't know about that. 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. Cardinal fish do it. Jawfish do it. It is fantastic. They will go sick lids. Sicklet fishes which you might know from aquaria, will sometimes do it. It's just a way to keep the eggs safe. 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 the lower the amount of care that you put into your babies, the more you've got to have. So like, if you're just gonna blow them out to 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, you might have fewer. And if a mouth breweder is just gonna have a couple of hundred, whereas a spawner broadcast spawner might have a couple thousand. A broadcast spawner broadcast spawner broadcasting to you, yes.
Is that just like holding eggs out of a moving car and you just.
See it's like 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. I have so many questions from listeners. Oh absolutely, 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, and this week we'll donate to the Monterey Bay Aquariums Seafood Watch program, which helps consumers and businesses make choices for a healthy ocean, and they protect the ocean now and for the future through trusted seafood recommendations and collaboration with businesses and governments and consumers and partners worldwide. You can learn more at seafoodwatch dot org and thank you to sponsors for helping us make that donate get value.
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Okay, let's get back to it. Okay your questions, Greg wants to know how has climate change affected fish species and fIF 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
your plastic. Like, if you are using plastic, fine, but recycle it, don't you know, don't let it get into the ocean. Be careful what you let into the waterways. 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 a it's a weird job, but I but I walked by the marina and.
It looked like a beautiful.
Aquarium and like a Durido'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.
We have full length episodes on oceanology and discard anthropology, which is all about garbage environmental toxicology. Those are linked in the show notes. But here is some ocean advice for you. Now 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 seconds ago.
We did it. We save the planet. Yay, okay.
Brian Edge wants to know have the populations of any species changed for the better since orgs like Monterey Bay Aquarium Sefood Watch have come around?
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 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 helped and boom problem solved.
Oh good to know. That's actually that gives me a lot of hope.
Mm hmm.
We have a full length and a Kid Savesmologies episode on nidariology on coral reefs and that will be linked in the show notes too. Jenna Kawala cal I say her name wrong every time I read it. I'm sorry, 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. 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't feel pain. I'm sorry fish. Mike Melshuer 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 mukis, just tucking 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, right, 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 what that must be like.
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 captivity?
Excellent question, and thank you for being so you know, so responsible. Yeah, beta fish are raising captivity. Go ahead and have as many as you're like. Okay, our beta was the best beta he's ever seen. Yeah.
Do you have any advice for someone who is who is trying to be an a chatheyologist?
Yeah, learn, take a lot of biology classes, you know, go take as much organism biology as you can and get out in the Oshan 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, if you need to work, you know, doing it for work, you gotta really, like you guys, study it. You gotta mean it. Yeah, yeah, you gotta study. Yeah, but just but it's wonderful. Definitely go diving. 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 corresponds to the evolution of the planet and through geologic time. I love the work I do popularizing science. I love the people I work with. It's a blast. Thank you so much for doing this. Oh you're so welcome. My pleasure, my pleasure at joy yeay, Gobi's Ugh, how obsessed with her? Are you right?
I'm like fully mom, jeez, So ask some more people fishy questions, because look at how contagious that love for fishes is.
So.
Doctor Chris Haacker is now at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History and Ceacenter and remains a favorite guest of mine. You can follow doctor Thacker at thachfish on Instagram and Twitter, and you can find more Somologies episodes at aliward dot com slash asmologies. We have several dozen now. They're also linked in the show notes. And thank you to Mercedes Maitland and see Gredriguez Thomas for working so
hard on these. We like to keep things small around here, so the rest of the credits are in the show notes. But if you stick around until the end, I give you a piece of advice, and this week's is that if you take a camera on a phone and you use the slow motion setting and you film yourself or your friend, or your grandpa or your mom making this noise with your mouth, you know, when you flap your lips, take a slow motion video of that. It's hilarious. I've
never seen anything funnier. Okay, have fun with that and until next time smologizes.
Bye byelogize, smolg alogy mitology, knowlogies.
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