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Plastic Bits are Food? An Anchovy’s Perspective…

Fish, People and the Ocean

anchovy, anchovies, anchovies and plastic
Anchovies:Photo credit: Erik Sorenson via Visual hunt / CC BY

Anchovies can smell plastic pieces in the ocean and mistake them for food.

Plastic bits or food-they all smell the same to me. Hi, I’m Annie, and I’m an anchovy. You may have seen my colleagues in a tin can (may they RIP), or in the ocean in a large shimmery school that’s hopefully not being eaten by large predators such as sharks and dolphins, eek!

You might also wonder how we can smell in the first place, as we live underwater. Chemicals travel through the water and into my nostrils, just like they do in the air for terrestrial animals. Sharks can smell blood from very far away or in low quantities. Salmon use their sense of smell to navigate back to their birthplace spawning ground upstream.

Back to the plastic bits-humans have found that over 50 kinds of fish mistakenly eat plastic, thinking that it’s food. That includes my friends and I. A neat study by humans using an anchovy school in an aquarium (Aquarium of the Bay in San Francisco, California) found that by measuring our schooling behavior (how tight we schooled and our body position relative to water flow) that we:

1. Use odors to locate food

2. Plastic pieces are confusing to us due to their similarity to food in appearance and smell

So what can you do to help? Avoid single use plastics (SUP) whenever possible and recycle if you do buy them! Less than 7 percent of plastic in the U.S. gets recycled. Thanks for recycling, every little bit helps! Fortunately I won’t be around in 2050 when there is more plastic in the ocean than fish…

I used information from these articles:
Bait and Switch: Anchovies Eat Plastic Because it Smells Like Prey

The Numbers on Plastics

10 Fabulous Facts About the Blue Footed Booby Bird

Seabirds
Blue Footed Booby Bird:Photo credit: <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/brj_bringin_the_shit_up_in_here_bitches/7303186922/">BRJ INC.</a> via <a href="https://visualhunt.com/re/569bd2">Visual Hunt</a> / <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/"> CC BY-NC-ND</a>
Blue Footed Booby Bird :Photo credit: BRJ INC. via Visual Hunt / CC BY-NC-ND

The blue footed what? The blue footed booby is a marine bird.


Don’t miss the blue footed booby bird mating dance video link below!

Here are 10 Fabulous Facts About the Blue Footed Booby Bird:

1. The male shows off his blue feet to the female when courting her. The bluer the feet, the more attractive he is to his potential mate.

2. The courtship dance by the male is very elaborate. Word don’t do it justice so here’s a a video on blue footed booby mating dance

3. The blue footed booby is 32-34 inches (81-86cm) high with a wingspan of 5 feet (1.5m). It weighs 3.25 pounds (1.5kg).

4. Blue footed boobies are expert hunters at sea. They will often dive from 80 feet high to catch fish underwater. They can also dive from a sitting position.

5. Both parents care for their chicks. They usually have 1-3 chicks at a time. A parent will cover their chick with their webbed feet to keep them warm.

6. Nestlings that are bullied go on to live happy and productive lives (they are easy to study because they have no natural predators and humans have never hunted them).

7. Blue footed boobies live off the west coasts of Central and South America, with half the breeding pairs living in the Galapagos Islands.

8. Young blue footed boobies have darker blue feet.

9. Their name is thought to come from the Spanish word “bobo” which means “stupid” or “clown.” They may look clumsy on land, but they far from stupid (maybe a bit bird-brained though).

10. Most blue footed boobies will live and breed within dozens of feet of where they were born.

Facts from National Geographic page on Blue Footed Boobies

Good article on Blue-Footed Boobies by the New York Times

10 Interesting Great White Shark Facts

10 facts, Elasmobranchs, Sharks
Great White Shark Facts: Photo credit: Elias Levy via Visualhunt / CC BY
Great White Shark: Photo credit: Elias Levy via Visualhunt / CC BY

10 Interesting Great White Shark Facts

1. Great white sharks are the largest predatory fish in the oceans.

2. The great white shark’s scientific name Carcharodon carcharias means ragged tooth.

3. The largest great white sharks recorded were over 20 feet long (6.1 m) and weighed over 5,000 pounds (2,268 kg).

4. Like all sharks, great white sharks have a “sixth sense” that detects electrical impulses such as your heart beating.

5. Adult great white sharks eat sea lions, seals, small toothed whales, sea turtles and carrion (meat from already dead animals). Young great white sharks eat mainly fish and rays.

6. Great white shark pups are 50-60 pounds at birth (22.7-27 kg), and 47-59 inches (120-150 cm) long.

7. Great white sharks are considered warm-blooded (like mammals) or endothermic. Their body temperature is warmer than the water surrounding them.

8. The only enemies of great white sharks are killer whales, larger sharks, and humans (who kill up to 100 million sharks of all species per year).

9. Recent studies suggest great white sharks use their excellent eyesight to spot their prey.

And the last great white shark fact is:
10. The IUCN (International Union for the Conservation of Nature) considers great white sharks “vulnerable” to extinction (and not endangered-yet).

Also see: 10 Cool Shark Facts: Your Questions Answered!

Great White Shark’s Adventure at the Monterey Bay Aquarium

Children’s Book Review: If Sharks Disappeared by Lily Williams

Book Reviews, Elasmobranchs, Sharks
Book: "If Sharks Disappeared" by Lily Williams
Book: “If Sharks Disappeared” by Lily Williams

If Sharks Disappeared, is written and illustrated by Lily Williams, and published by Roaring Brook Press. It is a much needed book about sharks. There are numerous children’s books about sharks, but not many show sharks in a positive light.

Instead of painting sharks as blood-thirsty human eaters, Williams shows how important sharks are to the ocean ecosystem. There is one “scary” picture of a great white shark, but it is cartoon-like enough not to be really scary. Otherwise Williams’ charming artwork depicts sharks as not scary and almost friendly (which most are!).

My favorite page shows a couple dozen sharks of different sizes and shapes. As a marine biologist it was a puzzle to try and figure them all out as they are not labeled. I also liked how there was dark-skinned girl as our guide throughout the book as showing diversity is becoming important in children’s books.

The “if sharks disappeared” portion of the book is not alarmist, but rational showing literally an ecosystem without sharks. The backmatter consists of a glossary and more information about how sharks are in trouble and what you can do to save them.

All in all, not just shark-loving kids will like this book. Most readers will be delighted with Williams’ shark artwork and will learn more about sharks at the same time. I highly recommend that you check out If Sharks Disappeared! (link to order)

10 Interesting Mola Mola Sunfish Facts

10 facts, Fish
Mola
Mola mola, or Ocean Sunfish picture from Wikimedia Commons

10 Mola Mola, or Ocean Sunfish, Facts: The fish so nice they named it twice!

1. Mola mola are known because of their unusual shape: an upright flattened disk, tapered top and bottom fins between body and tail, and small black eyes halfway between its small pectoral (side) fins and round mouth.

2. Mola Mola Sunfish got their name because they like to lay down on their sides and sun themselves at the surface. They do this to stay warm and to get rid of parasites (seabirds eat those).

3. Mola Mola are related to pufferfish, porcupinefish, and filefish (same Order Tetradontiformes).

4. Mola Mola lack a swim bladder so they swim constantly (or move fins side-to-side to hover).

5.Mola Mola are the largest bony fish in the ocean!
Average length 5.9 ft (1.8m), 8.2 ft (2.5m) fin-to-fin
Max length 10.8 ft (3.3m), 14 ft (4.2m) fin-to-fin
Weight range 545 lbs (247kg) to 5,100 lbs (2,300kg)

6. A single Mola Mola can host up to 40 species of parasites. It gets rid of them by sunning at the surface and having seabirds eat the parasites, or by cleaner fish and other fish eating the parasites at cleaning stations, or by breaching up to 10 ft (3m) out of the water.

7. Ocean Sunfish eat mainly jellies, but also eat salps, squid, crustaceans, small fish, fish larvae and eel grass.

8. Mola Mola can swim to depths down to 2,000 ft (600m).

From Wikipedia http://www.amonline.net.au/fishes/fishfacts/fish/molalav.htm
Mola fry: notice the spikes all around it: photo by G. David Johnson


9. Ocean Sunfish can grow to 60 million times their birth size (0.1 in, 2.5mm), a record for vertebrates! As fry (babies that are part of the plankton), sunfish have spines all around their body that they outgrow.

10. Enemies as young include bluefin tuna and mahi mahi, as adults sea lions (who often bite off their fins and play with them), killer whales, sharks and humans (caught to eat or as by-catch).

Also see: 10 Fun Facts About Opah Fish, or Moonfish

See article from: Oceana’s Ocean Sunfish page