This entry is a photo blog of a May 2016 expedition to capture deep-water fishes from the San Diego Trough, CA. I was lucky enough to participate in this cruise, led by Leo Smith from the University of Kansas. Leo dubbed the trip “Mission: Mesopelagic”, giving all researchers onboard hats with the trip’s catchphrase (see below). The cruise, which took place on UC San Diego’s R/V Robert Gordon Sproul, was a 4-day marathon of non-stop trawling and it was worth every second! Luckily, there was a lot of time between trawls (2 hours to deploy the net and another 2.5 to pull it back in) that I could spend taking photos of the awesome catches. Anyway, enough with the talking… here is a collection of pictures from the trip, with my best attempts to identify taxa:
Front of the hats worn on a deep-sea trawling trip in the San Diego Trough.Anoplogaster cornuta (common fangtooth)Sternoptyx cf. diaphana (diaphanous hatchet fish)Idiacanthus antrostomus (Pacific blackdragon)Benthalbella dentata (northern pearleye). Note teeth, resembling a scimitar sword.Unknown myctophidMalacosteus niger (stoplight loosejaw). Note similarities in dentition with Benthalbella dentata (above).Close-up of the suborbital photophores on Malacosteus niger.Unknown red shrimp. In the mesopelagic, red is effectively black, as red light waves do not penetrate to deep waters.Unknown red shrimpNemichthys cf. scolopaceus (slender snipe eel)Stomias sp.Stomias sp. close-up of headStomias sp., showing chin barbel.Stomias sp., showing its beautiful coloration pattern and ventral photophores (light organs).Amphipod (Phronima sp.) with its head sticking out of the hollowed salp body that it has made its home.Giant deep-sea amphipod (Cystisoma sp.).Borostomias panamensis, with a nicely preserved chin barbel.Really nice platytroctid (tubeshoulder) specimen. Note the little tube-like projection at the back of the black pigmented region on the lateral side of the fish. This structure squirts out luminous fluid, believed to be a predator avoidance tactic.Handful of Argyropelecus spp. Unknown, large-headed shrimp.We caught lots of these pelagic red crabs or “tuna crabs” (Pleuroncodes planipes). They were not my favorite catches due to their pointy rostra and sharp claws.Larval pleuronectiform.Opening the mouth of a gulper eel (Eurypharynx pelecanoides?).A deep sea cephalopod (Vampyroteuthis infernalis?), beak up.Lots of krill!
fishmorph.com 