Sea Life

Inspired by “Amusing Monday” on Christopher Dunagan’s Watching Our Water Ways blog, I’m officially launching “Thingy Thursday”!

Once in a while, folks send pictures or questions about aquatic life to me or to groups I’m affiliated with. Some are relatively straightforward. Some seem alien. Others confound the experts.

I’ll start with those that have come across my desk and add a few mysteries I’ve personally encountered. I really hope, readers will start sending questions and images (jaws@uw.edu) to help Thingy Thursday grow from a tiny larva to a full blown sea monster! … A bit overblown there,… but if you do happen to find a sea monster, please grab your camera.

Longnose lancetfish (Alepisaurus ferox). Photo by: Kim Esterberg

One of my favorites washed up on Bainbridge Island’s shoreline in October 2008. The pictures wound up on my desk, so I forwarded it to folks in the know. Several identified it as the longnose or long snouted lancetfish (Alepisaurus ferox). This is more of a reminder than an original story since it was blogged about at the time: Watching Our Water Ways: Another Strange Creature shows up in Puget Sound. Still I’ll add a couple extra elements.

What you can’t see in these pictures are the huge fangs (a pair on top and 2 pairs on the bottom) and the large, sail-like fin this deep sea predator sports. (Click here for good pictures of those features from a specimen in California).

Longnose lancetfish closeup of head. Photo by: Kim Esterberg

The musculature of these fish is described as “watery”, suggesting they ambush prey instead of actively chasing it down. They’re known to eat fish (including their own species), squid, crustaceans, and salps (free-floating sea squirts, highly evolved invertebrates). I wonder what the watery muscles mean for the fight they put up at the end of a fishing line? Very few people would know.

Another specimen washed up on Vancouver Island in April 2008. The article reported three other beached lancetfish sightings in the Northwest that month, as well as a barracuda and six-gill shark on Vancouver Island. The Bainbridge fish was found 3 months later.

More on lancet fish at… Wikipedia and FishBase

The oceans are full of amazing creatures, and once in a while they appear on that thin boundary between our world and theirs – the beach. I’ll offer up beach walk to the first person to find a giant or humbolt squid on a Salish Sea beach, and either send pictures or pull out the beak for me. You’re more likely to find them on the outer coast, but strange things show up in our inland waters from time to time.

Feel free to send along anything exciting or unusual. Here’s to life’s mysteries! JEff

Jeff Adams is a Washington Sea Grant Marine Water Quality Specialist, affiliated with the University of Washington’s College of the Environment, and based in Bremerton. You can follow his Sea-life blog, email to jaws@uw.edu or call at 360-337-4619.

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On my way around Sinclair Inlet this morning I was reminded that even though the daytime minus tides are over, the approaching full moon continues to provide us with ample beach to explore. I also watched as a big Navy ship was pulling out for Rich Passage, the Sound and presumably the oceans beyond. (Eyes back to the road please.)

Twenty minutes later, I was watching the huge ship from the five floors of glass staircase up to my office, but something else caught my attention. Waves. There were some pretty healthy waves in Sinclair Inlet. That means a lot of surface water was on the move. A couple other things came to mind… I had commented to someone earlier in the morning that it would be good kite weather. I had also noted flags firmly held toward the north by the southerly wind. … But when I saw the waves, I started to think of Hood Canal.

The short of it is that winds from the south (southerly) actually push the surface water in Hood Canal to the north. Deeper water with lower oxygen has to rise to take its place. Unfortunately, this year the deeper water in Hood Canal is particularly low in oxygen.

I walked into my office ready to write this blog and refer any readers to a recent note from the UW’s Hood Canal Dissolved Oxygen Program that noted oxygen values “among the lowest observed, based on the data sets available.” You can find the document by visiting the Hood Canal Dissolved Oxygen Program website and clicking on the Summer 2010 Hypoxia water drop on the right. Christopher Dunagan has been reporting on the threat in recent weeks.

Windblown flags and choppy waters in front of the Bremerton marina.

I also checked email, only to find that a fish kill report had already been announced. The following was passed along by researcher Jan Newton of the UW Applied Physics Laboratory…

“The midnight buoy profile at Hoodsport, Hood Canal, shows that the very low oxygen concentrations we’ve been following became shallower (within less than 10 m of surface) and that surface concentrations were very low (3.1 mg/L). This is consistent with what we predicted may occur with S winds. Conditions relaxed a bit this morning, surface oxygen currently 4.7 mg/L. If winds persist, it may get worse; if they relax, it may improve.”

She continued “A WDFW crew led by Wayne Palsson reports dead fish at Potlatch: sanddabs, greenlings, and blackbelly eelpouts [Lycodopsis pacifica].  They will be diving today, recording fish observations and oxygen concentrations at the Sund Rock area.”

You can look at plots of dissolved oxygen and other data from ORCA (Ocean Remote Chemical Analyzer) buoys near Hoodsport and Twanoh at the NANOOS NVS and HCDOP websites. Look for additional information at the Kitsap Sun (it’s already up) or in Christopher Dunagan’s Watching Our Water Ways blog. We’ll see what the next days/weeks hold for the south end of Hood Canal.

In the meantime… It really is a good time to pull out the kite. JEff

Jeff Adams is a Washington Sea Grant Marine Water Quality Specialist, affiliated with the University of Washington’s College of the Ocean and Fishery Sciences, and based in Bremerton. You can follow his Sea-life blog, email to jaws@uw.edu or call at 360-337-4619.

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