Sci.Am, SF Chronicle, Pop. Sci. etc: Bizarre, bubble-headed fish with tubular eyes and a taste for jelly
What? Spookfish again?! No, seriously, only the second time known to The Tracker, but nonetheless it is passing strange that in just a few weeks two spates of news relate discovery of fresh progress on a mystery that hardly any scientists knew existed: how do little, deep sea creatures’ tubular eyes work?
To back up, as reviewed in an earlier post. January 7, University College London, Bristol University, and others’ fish experts disclosed that the first-ever capture of live spookfish – off Tonga – led them to realize its cylindrical eyes are mirrored. That gives it, they said, exceedingly sharp vision in nearly dark, mesopelagic (which means pretty deep but not crazy deep) waters. Way cool.
Now even more interesting news is landing from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute. It has its own spookfish – also called a barreleye – in the great undersea canyon just offshore. It eats jellies (ie, jellyfish). And its tubular eyes may or may not have mirrors, but they can be aimed in various directions. That fixes a puzzle created by misapprehension by previous researchers who looked at dead versions and concluded their barrel eyes can only look upward, not straight ahead. They, too, caught some alive and gave them close scrutiny.
Only upon looking closely does one realize that the Tongan spookfish and the Monterey spookfish may have tubular eyes but they belong to different species, even to different genera (Dolichopteryx longipes and Macropinna microstoma). Thus one has convergent evolution, perhaps, of both tubular eyes’ genes and of nomenclature’s memes.
The latter, California fish may overall be the weirder of the two. The image is striking. Its head has a transparent dome resembling, says the MBARI scientific leader, the canopy of a jet fighter. Is the head’s interior shining with its own luminescence, or exterior lighting from the ROV? Dunno. But from here it looks also like Robbie the robot, with “his” flashing, whirling, working internal bits visible through glass.
The new report is in the journal Copeia. It also is on YouTube where it is among the most heavily watched videos of the day. News outlets have a lot of fun with it. Many writers give second billing to the discovery about the operation of the barrel eyes. It’s that transparent head that transfixes them.
Stories:
- NBC – Caitlin Millat : Crazy See-Through Fish Wows Scientists ; And it “gives new meaning to ‘clear-headed’,” she adds.
- Popular Science – Brooke Borel : Totally tubular / Researchers have finally cracked the case involving a bizarre deep-sea fish that has a transparent head and rotating tubular eyes ;
- Scientific American – Katherine Harmon : The Clear-Headed Fish ; Just a fat caption for the pic (and video), but it appears to reverse the eye discovery. The news is that it can see straight ahead, too. Already know was that it can see upward.
- San Francisco Chronicle – David Perlman : Fish pivots tubular eyes to scan for food ; Perlman doesn’t just jape on the funny fish’s looks, but explains how the work was done and how the animal’s attributes fit it into its ecosystem niche.
- Cosmos (Australia) – Gillian Shaw : Odd fish looks up through transparent head ; .
- Deep-Sea News – “Dr. M” : A blog by an expert, lively writing too: Scientists Solve The Mystery Of Shy This Fish Is So Freakin’ Crazy;
Grist for the Mill: MBARI press release ;
