Hello to all the fungi experts who enjoyed the toadstool grouper. The Australians on board tell me they commonly know that fish as a strawberry cod! Which just goes to show how common species names vary between places, and why it’s important for a species to have one scientific name to avoid possible confusion. And although Peter tells me he collected a form of rust from a land plant today, he hasn’t seen anything resembling a real toadstool on any of the islands he has visited.
Here’s another great fish name story. The very first fish collected on this expedition was a flying fish that landed on the deck of the boat.
It’s been amazing watching the flying fish gliding alongside the boat when we are underway – they can certainly travel a very long way, covering tens of metres at quite a height, and it’s not surprising they end up on the deck. Some of us were joking about them being flying missiles, when Clinton remarked ‘of course that’s how Exocet missiles got their name’. Turns out the family name for flying fish is Exocoetidae. Excellent!
Finn asked whether our zebra lionfish was poisonous. Good question. All lionfish have poisonous spines on their dorsal and pectoral fins, and although the poison is not deadly it is very, very painful. If you do get stung the best thing to do is put the wound in hot water – as hot as you can bear – for as long as you can tolerate. The poison is a protein that is denatured and deactivated by heat. Needless to say we are very careful where we put our feet when we have lionfish in the catch bags!
And how about this for an interesting two-for-the price-of one fish catch: look carefully inside the mouth of the giant squirrel fish …
Two for the price of one: Giant squirrel fish … with a blue knife fish inside
And what you see is the tail of a blue knife fish! When the biologists opened up the stomach of the giant squirrel fish it was completely filled by the blue knife fish that it had swallowed head-first and was too long to all fit in. Giant squirrel fish lurk under overhangs, while the blue knife fish is a plankton-feeder that spends the day out in the mid-water, so how did the two meet? The blue knife fish was slightly digested (except for the tail), and probably got eaten the night before when it came in to find a safe place to spend the night – but what it found instead was a big mouth. That’s life in the sea – a case of little fish getting eaten by bigger fish.
