Fieldwork Photos from Fishes
Image slideshow
In this gallery you will see some photos from our fishy fieldwork around the world to collect freshwater, marine, and fossil fishes.
Getting ready to release an otter trawl for collecting deep-sea fishes off the coast of San Diego.
Janet Voight, Kevin Swagel, Chris Jones, and Leo Smith sorting the bottom trawl, which contained mostly flatfishes and sea urchins.
A selection of deep-sea fishes collected off the coast of San Diego, California. Among the fishes collected are deep-sea hatchetfishes and dragonfishes.
A dragonfish collected off the coast of San Diego, California. This dragonfish is an open ocean predatory fish that attracts prety in the deep sea with it's bioluminescent barbel.
A Pacific Midshipman (Porichthys) collected in a bottom trawl off of San Diego. The white dots on its underbelly are bioluminescent light organs. This fish is called a midshipman because these light organs look like the buttons on a midshipman's uniform. Unlike most fishes, the bioluminescent toadfishes get their chemicals necessary for bioluminescence from their diet.
View of choppy ocean waves during an expedition to survey fishes in the Gulf of Mexico aboard the R/V Pelican.
Specimen of a Ogcocephalus batfish collected in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Louisiana. Batfishes are laterally compressed and sit on the bottom of the sea floor.
This large Cobia (Rachycentron canadum) was collected in the Gulf of Mexico. Cobia are open ocean swimmers that can grow to be 6 ft long and over 150 lbs!
Snorkeling for marine fishes in Madagascar.
An assortment of different marine fishes collected in Madagascar!
A freshwater river in Panama, filled with a diverse assemblage of fishes including cichlids, tetras, and livebearers.
A neotropical cichlid (Tomocichla sieboldii) collected in Panama. This fish can be found in rivers of Costa Rica and Panama.
Upper Triassic Chinle Formation in Lisbon Valley, Southeastern Utah. This area was once covered with various streams, rivers, and lakes over 210 million years ago.
This fossil fish was found lodged in the ceiling of a small cave in Lisbon Valley, Utah. This particular fish specimen is still partially enclosed in rock, with only the posterior end of the fish having been exposed over the course of 200 million years.
This specimen was collected in the Upper Triassic Chinle Formation in Lisbon Valley, Utah. It is a semionotiform fish, an extinct group of fishes that were covered in thick armor-like scales. This group of fishes are hypothesized to have gone extinct by the end of the Cretaceous period (approximately 65 million years ago).
One of the more glamorous aspects of fieldwork is coming up with creative ways for large groups of isolated people to keep some semblence of sanitation and civilization. Case in point: this make-shift toilet in the middle of a Utah desert.
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