Speaker 1: Imagine the place where you can escape for a day,
Speaker 1: get immersed in a world of rooms, inspiration, and expertise,
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Speaker 2: Hey, Ologized, it's your old dad over here, Ali Ward,
Speaker 2: I'm not recording in my closet today, can you believe it?
Speaker 2: I'm sixteen floors up in a hotel in New York,
Speaker 2: and it's midnight on a Friday night, and I'm out
Speaker 2: here for work shooting this new show. If you listen
Speaker 2: to the very end of each episode, I usually tell
Speaker 2: secret to the people who stick it out past the credits,
Speaker 2: so you may have heard it last week. And if not,
Speaker 2: more on that when they let me tell you legally
Speaker 2: or whatever. But I'm excited about this episode wiggling its
Speaker 2: way into your consciousness is a good one. This ologist
Speaker 2: isugh like. Imagine when an Italian chef kisses his fingertips.
Speaker 2: She's so good. Also, if you hear any weird sirens
Speaker 2: or the people in the hotel room next to me
Speaker 2: coughing or doing other things. Sorry. Okay, So fish they're
Speaker 2: out there, they're underwater, they're deep in the sea or
Speaker 2: skimming the surface of lakes with fins, and they got
Speaker 2: fleshy lobe fins and sharp noses and sometimes blobby faces
Speaker 2: and big teeth and sucker mouths, and we really like them.
Speaker 2: Some people love them, and I like fish, but I
Speaker 2: love the people who love fish. I love them. I'm
Speaker 2: a creep for fish people, the way that their eyes
Speaker 2: light up when you talk about swim bladders and larval
Speaker 2: stages and biodiversity. So I was giddy as hell to
Speaker 2: talk face to face about fish. But while we're talking creeps,
Speaker 2: let's get to our intro segment, Creeping your Reviews, in
Speaker 2: which I thank you all for leaving reviews on iTunes.
Speaker 2: It really helps get ologies up in the charts. Since
Speaker 2: launching this kind of dream project in September, this podcast
Speaker 2: is pretty much hovered in the top thirty or twenty
Speaker 2: science podcast on iTunes, which is a very big deal
Speaker 2: for me and my heart. Thank you for putting it
Speaker 2: there with your ratings and reviews, and by subscribing and
Speaker 2: telling a friend it really matters. So I'm going to
Speaker 2: read the reviews that really tickled me. I am going
Speaker 2: to say Rare Cactus said, infotainment, entercation, whatever your favorite
Speaker 2: portmanteau is for the intersection of learning and laughing. Ali
Speaker 2: Ward lives in that space, and I thought her use
Speaker 2: of portmanteau's really moved me. Also, portmanteau is a portmanteau whatever.
Speaker 2: We'll talk about it sometime. I also want to thank
Speaker 2: shen Yan who said this is the holy grail of podcasts,
Speaker 2: like no pressure, so much wisdom and knowledge to be
Speaker 2: gained with every episode. I've listened to over four hundred
Speaker 2: different podcasts in a frantic, desperate search to find meaning
Speaker 2: and clarity in my daily life. This podcast delivered those
Speaker 2: goods and spades, and now I finally feel better about
Speaker 2: my nightmarish existence and have the inner fortitude to do
Speaker 2: normal things like take out the trash. Thanks Ali, Thank
Speaker 2: you for that review because it's relatable. Sometimes you're like, oh,
Speaker 2: I have to take out the trash during this nightmarish
Speaker 2: existence of life on planet Earth right now, and you
Speaker 2: did it, and I relate and high fives. Okay, and
Speaker 2: thank you real quick to all the patrons who support
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Speaker 2: As a thank you, your questions get asked to theologists.
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Speaker 2: There are hats, pins, tots, mugs, all kinds of stuff,
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Speaker 2: because you are one, so says all Ward. Okay on
Speaker 2: the episode. First, the etymology of ichthyology pretty straightforward. Ichthys
Speaker 2: means fish in Greek. It also sounds like a cat sneezing,
Speaker 2: like ichthys. Do it? Do it right?
Speaker 3: Now?
Speaker 4: Eke these right?
Speaker 2: Whatever? Okay? So this ologist let me into the bowels
Speaker 2: of a natural history museum, to the very basement where
Speaker 2: she walked me through Florida ceiling gray metal shelves filled
Speaker 2: with jars of fish suspended in these amber, chunky liquids,
Speaker 2: past these articulated fish skeletons. Apparently the collection the museum
Speaker 2: is over five million specimens of just fish, which weigh
Speaker 2: a lot of pounds, so they got to put them
Speaker 2: on the bottom floor because they're so heavy. That's the
Speaker 2: thing with museums. What you see on display is the
Speaker 2: tiniest fraction of what they really have. So much is
Speaker 2: kept in the back in libraries and warehouses is like
Speaker 2: a catalog for research. So we pulled up some chairs
Speaker 2: in this little library and this ologist, Honestly, she has
Speaker 2: the regal presence of Robin Wright, but she has the
Speaker 2: timing of a comedian, and she has the obsessive fish
Speaker 2: knowledge of a savant. And I just could not get
Speaker 2: over her. I couldn't get over her. It was a
Speaker 2: gear may. So you'll learn about the touching relationship between
Speaker 2: a fish and a shrimp that I want to write
Speaker 2: a quiet indie movie about why you should never name
Speaker 2: a species after yourself, What seafood you should not eat?
Speaker 2: The worst fish husbands peeing in the ocean embarrassing mating strategies,
Speaker 2: a fish where they got five million goddamn jars, and
Speaker 2: how you can save the planet. You and me. So
Speaker 2: we cover a lot of ground, and by ground I
Speaker 2: mean ocean. So let's dive in with ichthyologist doctor Chris Beacker.
Speaker 2: So you are an ichthyologist.
Speaker 4: That's right.
Speaker 2: I study fish. How often do you? People spelled that wrong?
Speaker 4: Pretty much every time. And it's very awkward to say, oh,
Speaker 4: there's two hs in that, because that kind of doesn't
Speaker 4: make sense of people two ages? What it's what? What?
Speaker 4: But yeah, it's constantly misspelled. It's misspelled on my badge,
Speaker 4: is it really? Yeah? It was on my old badge.
Speaker 4: The one I have now is fixed.
Speaker 2: But man, how long did it take you to notice?
Speaker 4: I know, oh, I always know. I noticed it right away.
Speaker 4: I know this is right away. But it didn't bother me.
Speaker 4: It's so common.
Speaker 2: How long have you been an ichth theologist? Since birth?
Speaker 4: Since? Yeah? Since ever?
Speaker 2: Chris has worked at the Natural History Museum of Alley
Speaker 2: County for almost twenty years, and she's been studying a
Speaker 2: specific group of little fishies for almost twenty five years.
Speaker 2: That is a long term relationship with fish. How did
Speaker 2: you fall in with this gang of fish?
Speaker 4: The fish that I work on are called Gobi's and
Speaker 4: they are a group of reefishes and stream fishes. They're
Speaker 4: found all around the world. I fell into them completely
Speaker 4: by accident. I was fascinated with larval fish. I was
Speaker 4: fascinated with a tiny little larvae that you know are
Speaker 4: so complicated and yet and yet tiny. I was living
Speaker 4: in Hawaii, I was working on a master's degree. I
Speaker 4: was studying a larval fish called Chinlaria.
Speaker 2: Shinlaria definitely sounds like a disease you'd pick up at
Speaker 2: a college party, but it's actually one of the smallest
Speaker 2: vertebrates in the world. So how eaty bitty is this fish? Well,
Speaker 2: it only weighs about a tenth of a gram when
Speaker 2: it's fully grown. So it's everywhere in the Pacific and
Speaker 2: in the Indian oceans. And the common name for it
Speaker 2: is stout infant fish, which I feel like is a
Speaker 2: really good insult if you're feeling fancy, So okay, if
Speaker 2: they're so tiny, how do you even see them?
Speaker 4: And it's just like a clear little shimmer in the water.
Speaker 4: When I went out to catch them, I asked a
Speaker 4: guy who knew about these fish what they look like,
Speaker 4: and he said, go down in the water and look
Speaker 4: for the shimmer like steam rising off a boiler pan.
Speaker 2: That's how you find these things.
Speaker 4: Yep. You go out there, you pull a net through
Speaker 4: that shammer and you come up with shin laria. Or
Speaker 4: you can go out at night and just pull a
Speaker 4: plankton net. So I did a lot of night plankton.
Speaker 2: Work INAII in Hawaii. Did that not suck?
Speaker 4: It was the best, except for the time that I
Speaker 4: almost hit a whale.
Speaker 2: What happened.
Speaker 4: It was nighttime, but there was just like a whale
Speaker 4: and her calf kind of parked in this channel, and
Speaker 4: I was trying to go out, and you know, when
Speaker 4: it's dark, you don't really see the black shape of
Speaker 4: a whale in the water. It's difficult. I did not
Speaker 4: hit the whale. Let me be clear. I did not
Speaker 4: hit the whale or the whale calf. But you know,
Speaker 4: it's a federal crime to touch a whale.
Speaker 2: So is it illegal to touch a whale? Appears to
Speaker 2: be an affirmative. So it's illegal to feed or attempt
Speaker 2: to feed any species of marine mammal. Now in some
Speaker 2: states it's illegal to even approach whales within a few
Speaker 2: hundred meters, so essentially operate as though all whales have
Speaker 2: restraining orders against you. So it's not illegal, however, to
Speaker 2: look at pictures of them and dream about them, and
Speaker 2: I wonder if they're thinking of you too. But whales
Speaker 2: are fish, So back to fish. Were you always into fish? Well?
Speaker 4: I was, And as I said, I was working on
Speaker 4: this fish called Shinlaria. And it turned out at the
Speaker 4: time it was not known. It was so weird that
Speaker 4: it wasn't known what kind of fish. It was a
Speaker 4: real yeah, no one knew that. There were some theories,
Speaker 4: but it was like, what is this weird thing? And
Speaker 4: I thought, oh, you know, everything's fine as long as
Speaker 4: it's not a gobe. Because gobi's were so complicated. There's
Speaker 4: so many, there's thousands of species, it's a huge group.
Speaker 4: They're all tiny. And when I finished my master's degree
Speaker 4: that same year, so it was determined that it was
Speaker 4: a gobe. I went away to grad school for a
Speaker 4: PC I ended up working on gobe's the whole time,
Speaker 4: and I'm still doing it.
Speaker 2: So you were like, please don't be a gobe.
Speaker 4: And then it was a goobe and then it was
Speaker 4: like Psyche, the universe is like psych You're gonna work
Speaker 4: on the hardest group of fishes there is. Suck it up.
Speaker 2: Maybe the world needed you, fish needed you.
Speaker 4: It's one of those things that turned that was absolutely
Speaker 4: terrifying and turned out to be the best possible answer
Speaker 4: because Gobi's are so fascinating and variable. They do anything
Speaker 4: like any evolutionary thing you want to study, a gobi
Speaker 4: is doing it pretty much.
Speaker 2: Did you have fish growing up as pets?
Speaker 4: I did. That's how That's how I got into I
Speaker 4: think that's what started this madness because I remember when
Speaker 4: I was just a little kid, maybe five years old,
Speaker 4: like staring into a fish tank. We had some little
Speaker 4: little you know, ras boras or sort of little darter
Speaker 4: fish in the tank and just staring at it and
Speaker 4: like being sort of frightened because I couldn't understand how
Speaker 4: this little tiny thing could be alive and like breathing water.
Speaker 4: I remember just just tripping balls on the idea that
Speaker 4: there were animals that were breathing water, And from that
Speaker 4: sort of fear came came. It was the fear that
Speaker 4: turned into a fascination, and so that's that's how it happened.
Speaker 2: Did you study biology and stuff in high school as well?
Speaker 4: I studied biology in high school. Yes, And I went
Speaker 4: away to college and I thought, I've always been very analytical.
Speaker 4: I love math, I love physics, chemistry. I was gonna
Speaker 4: study chemistry. And I remember sort of that I had
Speaker 4: taken you know, natural history classes in college and taken
Speaker 4: chology and ize into it, and I started learning about fish.
Speaker 4: And then when I decided to go to get a
Speaker 4: master's in Hawaii, that the deal was pretty sealed. But
Speaker 4: I sort of remember this as a college time conversion.
Speaker 4: But I was recently. I recently had found my high
Speaker 4: school yearbook and there were people who had signed my
Speaker 4: yearbook good luck with the fish.
Speaker 2: What.
Speaker 4: Yes, there was a signature. There were like three different
Speaker 4: people who sort of hope you have a good times
Speaker 4: learning about fish. One and said, oh, you know, enjoy it.
Speaker 4: I'm sure someday you'll be ichthologists to the stars.
Speaker 2: And here you are in Los Angeles, right ologists.
Speaker 4: I was like goal achieved.
Speaker 2: I wanted to fact check and see if there were
Speaker 2: any celebrity ichthyologist or like fish people to the stars,
Speaker 2: And the closest competition I found was these two guys
Speaker 2: who run an aquarium business in Las Vegas and have
Speaker 2: a reality show, which took me to a surreal clip
Speaker 2: of Tracy Morgan appreciated biodiversity. I love exotic animals, and
Speaker 2: there's there's some people that don't even know that these
Speaker 2: animals live with.
Speaker 1: Us here on a planet.
Speaker 4: It keeps me from watching TV.
Speaker 2: I like to watch the animals sometimes. Let's back up
Speaker 2: and can you tell me what a fish is?
Speaker 4: Okay? A fish is a vertebrate, which means it has
Speaker 4: a bony skeleton with a backbone. It's a vertebrate that
Speaker 4: lives in the water. That's about well, that's about it,
Speaker 4: although it obviously doesn't include some water living vertebrates like whales.
Speaker 2: Fishes breathe water.
Speaker 4: They don't have lungs. They're part of a clade called
Speaker 4: the bony fishes are part of a clade called ACTIONOPTERIDGII.
Speaker 2: Okay, what was that word acting after agi, which means
Speaker 2: ray finn fishes. It kind of sounds like the first
Speaker 2: line of a camp song, like the sequel to John
Speaker 2: Janngle Jimberheimer Schmidt. Right, Okay, back to it.
Speaker 4: Which describes some characters of like the way the fins
Speaker 4: are arranged some kind of details of the bones, but
Speaker 4: basically they're a vertebrate animal in the water.
Speaker 2: That's not a whale.
Speaker 4: That's not a whaler, a dolph and right, or a
Speaker 4: seal okay, or a snake right, or human being m
Speaker 4: you know what I mean, or your dog at the beach.
Speaker 2: Exactly as soon as you have a backbone or in
Speaker 2: the water, you become a fish. Well, no, I would
Speaker 2: like to think so. So this is a very I
Speaker 2: mean going back to like when you were a kid
Speaker 2: and you were marveling at the tank. This is such
Speaker 2: a basic question. But how to fish breathe?
Speaker 4: It is?
Speaker 3: It is?
Speaker 4: That's not a basic question. That was a complicated Okay. Gases,
Speaker 4: so they need oxygen. They're like us. They need oxygen
Speaker 4: to run their cells. They absorb oxygen from the water,
Speaker 4: but that's more difficult than absorbing oxygen from the air.
Speaker 4: Although remember our lungs are wet like air, we also
Speaker 4: absorb oxygen from water. It's just a thin scrim of
Speaker 4: water inside a lung.
Speaker 2: Oh hey, heads up, you got moist as hell lungs now,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 4: But fishes have a very frilly complicated blood enriched gill
Speaker 4: sort of filament looks like feathers, like a filament. Well,
Speaker 4: you've seen them on an axilotte right just inside the head.
Speaker 4: And the purpose of that is to exchange have a
Speaker 4: lot of surface area, exchange with water and oxygen diffuses
Speaker 4: from the water into the blood.
Speaker 2: Okay, So then what is the deal with a fish bladder?
Speaker 4: Okay, so you mean a swim last, swim swim blast. Yeah,
Speaker 4: fishes have swim bladders, well not all, but most of them,
Speaker 4: and those are for regulating buoyants. He because remember, fishes
Speaker 4: live in sort of three D. They move side to side,
Speaker 4: they move forward and back, but they also move up
Speaker 4: and down. Oh yeah, you know, compared to the fishes,
Speaker 4: we're sort of just like in flat land, Like we
Speaker 4: move like just in a few directions. But fish are
Speaker 4: actually basically always.
Speaker 2: Flying underwater, never wearing pants, flying without ever falling. I'm like, oh, okay,
Speaker 2: I get it. Like fish have the best lives. They
Speaker 2: have the best lives. They also have swim bladders which
Speaker 2: fill with gas and floats them up and down kind
Speaker 2: of like a functional whoope cushion.
Speaker 4: Most of the time. And it's there are also some
Speaker 4: types of fishes that can actually gulp air and put
Speaker 4: it into their swim bladers. But obviously that's not going
Speaker 4: to work for a fish that lives, you know, one
Speaker 4: hundred feeple of surface. So there's two different kinds.
Speaker 2: Do you have a favorite strata of fish, like in
Speaker 2: terms of pelagic or and I will will have to
Speaker 2: remember and look up again, like what the zones are,
Speaker 2: but like in terms of ocean zones. Yeah, okay, quick
Speaker 2: quick rundown of ocean zones, just in case you're ever
Speaker 2: at a bar trivia night and you need to impress
Speaker 2: your coworkers or your new significant other siblings. Okay, The
Speaker 2: ocean zones are roughly epipolagic at the top, these parts
Speaker 2: get sunlight, so plants grow there. The majority of ocean
Speaker 2: life lives in this zone. Goes down about two hundred
Speaker 2: meters or around six hundred feet for US non metric Americans. Okay,
Speaker 2: Below that are the mesopolagic, bath pelagic, abyssle, polgic, and
Speaker 2: finally the very very bottom, which are the hatel zones.
Speaker 2: That's like the deep dark. So there you go. If
Speaker 2: anyone ever wins Jeopardy or a bet, you owe me
Speaker 2: exactly one American dollar payable in coins if need be
Speaker 2: for this information, you are welcome. Okay, So what is
Speaker 2: her favorite?
Speaker 4: I am It's I'm super basic. I like the near
Speaker 4: shore stuff. I like the shallow water stuff. I like
Speaker 4: the coral reef stuff. I like the inshore up into
Speaker 4: the streams. I'm getting into river fishes more. And it's
Speaker 4: interesting because most of life on the planet is right
Speaker 4: around the earth, the air water interface, right like near coast,
Speaker 4: close to the ocean, and then you know, right right
Speaker 4: around there is most of the air, terrestrial life and
Speaker 4: bird life. I mean, you start to get too high
Speaker 4: and there's nothing same thing. When you start to get
Speaker 4: too deep, there's not as much. It's all kind of
Speaker 4: right around that bands where those things are.
Speaker 2: I've never really thought about that, just thought, I guess cool, Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's crazy.
Speaker 4: You know why I was thinking that because I was
Speaker 4: I was driving down pH and I was looking at
Speaker 4: one thing I never tire of. Is this the glint
Speaker 4: of the sunlight off the water, and it looks like
Speaker 4: a skin. And I was thinking about the skin of
Speaker 4: the water and how it looks like a solid thing
Speaker 4: and how everything lives. You know, the closer to that,
Speaker 4: the better MM hmm.
Speaker 2: Do you go to the ocean a lot living in
Speaker 2: LA because I know we're near downtown and I get
Speaker 2: to the ocean like once a year. Like, how are
Speaker 2: do you surf every morning? Are you most in there? No?
Speaker 4: No, No, I don't usually if I'm going into the ocean,
Speaker 4: I'm working.
Speaker 2: Okay, do you what kind of what is a day
Speaker 2: like for you?
Speaker 4: Well, right now, I'm just in the office. So it's
Speaker 4: a lot of like some of its lab work, some
Speaker 4: of its spreadsheets, some of its emails. Sometimes I have
Speaker 4: to photograph things. I've been writing a lot lately, which
Speaker 4: is really nice. I have if I'm traveling a lot
Speaker 4: of times I will travel to visit museum collections or
Speaker 4: visit colleagues, and in that case, I will go into
Speaker 4: someone else's collection and look at the jars of fish
Speaker 4: and take fish out and examine them and look at
Speaker 4: them in certain ways. And then if I'm in the field,
Speaker 4: it's work, work, work. It's like dive, dive, dive, fish,
Speaker 4: fish fish.
Speaker 2: I've never been diving. But what does it feel like
Speaker 2: down there? Does it feel like freedom, does it feel
Speaker 2: like cozy.
Speaker 4: Feels like you're flying? Yeah, it's cold, I'll say that
Speaker 4: it's cold and you have to, you know, wear a wetsuit,
Speaker 4: wear a drysuit, be careful. But it is the thing
Speaker 4: that people often don't realize is that when you're in
Speaker 4: the water completely submerged for a long time, the water
Speaker 4: really sucks the heat out of your body. So you
Speaker 4: gotta you gotta be thermally insulated. That's why you often
Speaker 4: see divers wearing big suits.
Speaker 2: Is it true that divers and surfers do pee in them?
Speaker 4: I get asked this skill lot.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, and those okay.
Speaker 4: This is why I would say, I say this is like,
Speaker 4: it's like peeing in the shower. It's like, you can't
Speaker 4: honestly say that it never happens. I couldn't, like I
Speaker 4: couldn't like look you in the eye and swear to
Speaker 4: you that I've never done it. But I try to
Speaker 4: keep it to a minimum. I would do it. I
Speaker 4: mean the fisher doing it, the fisherre doing it, Yeah,
Speaker 4: but the fish. It doesn't get trapped on the fish's body.
Speaker 4: And when you're gonna when you're in the field and
Speaker 4: you're like you're in hell and gone New Guinea and
Speaker 4: you're gonna be there for a month and you've got
Speaker 4: like one or two wet suits and you're wearing them
Speaker 4: every day. Yeah, yeah, try not to, you try not to.
Speaker 2: Okay, good to know. I appreciate the candor that isn't
Speaker 2: that is a question that would have plagued me. I
Speaker 2: would have been driving home being like I wish I
Speaker 2: would ask that makes it feel better, okay. Saltwater fish
Speaker 2: freshwater fish. I think we don't think about it until
Speaker 2: it comes time to have Perhaps one is a pet
Speaker 2: and you're like, oh, if you have a saltwater aquarium,
Speaker 2: you are a millionaire.
Speaker 4: It's a whole different thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if you have a bowl with a fish in
Speaker 2: it that costs a dollar. Like, what is the what
Speaker 2: is the difference in how they live and how they
Speaker 2: breathe and exist, the difference in how.
Speaker 4: It has to do with osmo. What's called osmo regulation,
Speaker 4: which is the regulation of salt basically in your body
Speaker 4: and outside your body. So the kidney, you know, pumps
Speaker 4: salt one way or the other. Freshwater fishes live in
Speaker 4: a situation where they've got too much salt relative to
Speaker 4: the freshwater around them. Saltwater fishes have less salt than
Speaker 4: the water around them, so they just have to be
Speaker 4: careful with their kidneys. Some of them go back and forth.
Speaker 4: What oh yeah, well salmon right, salmon go down, they
Speaker 4: go up the river, they have their babies, they wash
Speaker 4: back down, they live some time in the ocean. They
Speaker 4: switch back. Lots of gobies do this too, really, yeah,
Speaker 4: how do they do that? They have badass kidneys, that's how.
Speaker 2: Wow, you know, I never knew. I always thought like
Speaker 2: once they got to a brackish zone, they'd be like,
Speaker 2: I'm out of here. Some do okay. Yeah, I've seen
Speaker 2: salmon spawning in a stream, and I've always wondered, like,
Speaker 2: clearly that makes them so vulnerable to predation if you
Speaker 2: wanted sashimi was just like any of them. I mean,
Speaker 2: how screwed are they when they do that?
Speaker 4: Well, I mean you've seen the bears. Yeah, just scooping them,
Speaker 4: just scooping them up. Just watch them, just watch them
Speaker 4: go by, grabbing them one by one. There's a lot
Speaker 4: of them. Yeah, and some of them make it and
Speaker 4: some of them don't. But a lot of them make it.
Speaker 4: And also you know, a lot the ones that do
Speaker 4: make it, they'll have hundreds and thousands of eggs, and
Speaker 4: so that's kind of how fishes deal most of the
Speaker 4: time with the lottery of having children is that they
Speaker 4: have a whole bunch and just hope that some survive.
Speaker 2: Right, they're like by good luxia, Yeah, have fun.
Speaker 4: Yeah, okay, okay bye.
Speaker 2: See. Also, the enormous Catholic broods on either side of
Speaker 2: my family lineage, so many. It's like some of them
Speaker 2: will probably be fine when it comes to the little guys.
Speaker 2: You study a lot of little guys. You showed me
Speaker 2: some cool specimens. Is that also a numbers game? I
Speaker 2: mean they're kind of are they kind of lower on
Speaker 2: the food chain, right, it's kind.
Speaker 4: Of a it's a value laden term. It's evaluating.
Speaker 2: Sorry, Yes, yes they are.
Speaker 4: They are. It's their food for a lot of other things,
Speaker 4: it's true. Yeah, And there's a lot of them. There's
Speaker 4: a lot of them. There's so the larger group that
Speaker 4: they're a part of is maybe twenty, say, twenty five
Speaker 4: hundred species, and the total number of bony fishes is
Speaker 4: like twenty five thousand, so that little more so that's
Speaker 4: ten percent of fishes right there.
Speaker 2: How many fish species have been identified.
Speaker 4: So, like I said, twenty twenty six thousand in that ballpark. Yeah,
Speaker 4: there's more all the time. People are finding more all
Speaker 4: the time, and there's more out there we don't know
Speaker 4: about it. I mean, there might be fifty thousand out
Speaker 4: there that we just haven't we haven't gotten them yet.
Speaker 2: And you just walked me through the collections. You have
Speaker 2: five million specimens here in jars.
Speaker 4: Yep, where do you get the jars? Well, you know
Speaker 4: that's a good th't that's a very good question. You know,
Speaker 4: if you're talking about like a straight eight to squad eight,
Speaker 4: you want a gallon, you want a big hinge one
Speaker 4: with a lid that's different different places, But a general
Speaker 4: bottle in here in Los Angeles, cells, cells jars.
Speaker 2: Okay, curiosity and procrastination got the better of me and
Speaker 2: I googled general bottle supply. Why not? It's legit. Now,
Speaker 2: if you ever get lost in a catalog of jars,
Speaker 2: whoo short tall amber, cobalt blue lidded, narrow boy, howdie
Speaker 2: woo jar heaven, this will change at least one of
Speaker 2: your lives out there. I'm convinced. Do you ever have
Speaker 2: to take like donations like hey, if anyone's got any
Speaker 2: big pickle jugs like.
Speaker 4: Drop off, that's exactly what we don't like to do
Speaker 4: only because the you know, let me tell you the
Speaker 4: problem is not the jar, it's the lid. Oh, glass
Speaker 4: jar is a glass jar. You gotta think about your
Speaker 4: closure to some serious collection management. Gotta get that lid
Speaker 4: nice and tire. You wanted to have a nice liner.
Speaker 4: It's important.
Speaker 2: Oh or else you've got all kinds of evaporation happening exactly, Okay,
Speaker 2: Now what happens when and say an oar fish washes
Speaker 2: up side note? An oor fish is this long, long, long,
Speaker 2: like sometimes up to eleven meters or over thirty feet.
Speaker 2: That's like a three story building, long, bony, snaky looking
Speaker 2: fish that lives in temperate or tropical waters. Now, when
Speaker 2: they're sick or dying, they tend to come up to
Speaker 2: the surface just to be like it's the end. So
Speaker 2: they're at the surface, and they fueled all these old
Speaker 2: pirty rumors of sea serpents. They also have these two
Speaker 2: long fins on their bellies which look kind of like
Speaker 2: canoe oars. Google image search them and then tell me
Speaker 2: if you emitted a scream like Homer Simpson. And it's
Speaker 2: a specimen that everyone is just crazy for, Like what
Speaker 2: do you do what happens is usually we get a
Speaker 2: phone call and they'll say, this is great fish.
Speaker 4: Do you want to come get it? Do you want it?
Speaker 4: We've had stuff wash up, you know, or fish, sharks,
Speaker 4: various things. Sometimes fishermen will catch some weird thing and
Speaker 4: they'll call us and we'll go get it, and then
Speaker 4: we'll like, we have you. There's some pictures on my
Speaker 4: I have an Instagram account at sackfish t J A
Speaker 4: C K Fish then that I post like behind the
Speaker 4: scenes fish's stuff. And one of the pictures on there
Speaker 4: is us prepping the oar fish, so great big fish.
Speaker 4: We had to have a tank especially built and we
Speaker 4: fixed it and we put it up on display upstairs.
Speaker 2: I love that fish.
Speaker 4: It's a great fish.
Speaker 2: I mean I used to be as a volunteer. I
Speaker 2: would get stationed there a lot.
Speaker 4: Did you really did you know that? You know, so
Speaker 4: you know how it has those long oars? Did you
Speaker 4: notice that one of them is broken? And our collection
Speaker 4: manager had to like plastic surgery fix it with a
Speaker 4: drinking straw, with like a piece of drinking straw. It
Speaker 4: was a little bit of like mortuary, you know. Body, yes, yeah,
Speaker 4: body preparation for display I've.
Speaker 2: Heard that there's I just heard that there's an ology
Speaker 2: for that of the It's like cosmetology and pantatology combined.
Speaker 2: By there must be I must get what it's called.
Speaker 2: But I didn't know anyone did that for or fish.
Speaker 2: By the bye, that ology is desirology, and I just
Speaker 2: want to give props to Meghan Rosenbloom of Death Salon
Speaker 2: for the heads up on that. Also. I used to
Speaker 2: volunteer at the museum talking to kids about this ar fish,
Speaker 2: and I never ever noticed the drinking straw. But after
Speaker 2: this interview at the museum, I went upstairs and I
Speaker 2: looked for it and I saw it and I loved it.
Speaker 2: So a photo will be up on the ologies Instagram
Speaker 2: because you got to see this you would never notice. Man,
Speaker 2: I love that dead fish. This one time a little
Speaker 2: girl looked at it and then she looked at me
Speaker 2: and she asked, is it dead? And I told her
Speaker 2: yes and died naturally. And then she asked me, is
Speaker 2: the fish in heaven with my grandpa? And I said, man,
Speaker 2: I hope so, because that sounds like a real party,
Speaker 2: little dude. I love the idea of her grandpa like
Speaker 2: listening to disco drink it as seagrums and sevens just
Speaker 2: with a dead ass sea serpent. What's the craziest fish
Speaker 2: you've ever seen?
Speaker 4: Irl? Something called a hulafish?
Speaker 2: What is it?
Speaker 4: Okay? A hula fish is a small refish that lives
Speaker 4: in Australia and it is only found in Australia. And
Speaker 4: I'd never heard of it. I've never seen it. And
Speaker 4: there's just like a couple of years ago, I'm sending
Speaker 4: fish all this time and I've done in a crime
Speaker 4: in Sydney and I saw this fish in the tank
Speaker 4: and I had no idea what it was like, no idea,
Speaker 4: And that's.
Speaker 2: A weird feeling, right given you know what I do.
Speaker 2: And I just stared at as.
Speaker 4: Stared and start and it was like I was five
Speaker 4: again looking at this tank, going how is this possible?
Speaker 4: What is this alien thing? Yeah? Hulafish freaky looking and
Speaker 4: it looks like nothing. It's a little got blue and
Speaker 4: white stripes, but it moves in a very sinuous way
Speaker 4: like a hula answer, hence the name.
Speaker 2: And that's where they got it exactly. I saw a
Speaker 2: video and a hula fish does have moose? Have you
Speaker 2: ever gotten to name the fish.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, I have named several fish.
Speaker 2: How do you do? Where do you come up with it?
Speaker 3: Uh?
Speaker 4: Let's see. One of them I named for the color.
Speaker 4: One of it I named for the locality. There's one
Speaker 4: that i'm naming right now that I just showed you
Speaker 4: that I'm naming for the guy who worked on it, Midgley.
Speaker 2: Do you get to name anything after yourself.
Speaker 4: That's considered poor form? Okay, yeah, that's Gonta the perform
Speaker 4: I have three seasons named after me by people.
Speaker 2: Oh my god. So if you have a fish named
Speaker 2: after you, it's because someone else is like ding, you
Speaker 2: deserve this, But if you do it, you do yourself.
Speaker 4: You're a douche. I never that.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, that's so great.
Speaker 4: You got it if you really can. I mean, and
Speaker 4: if you really care about such things, you just make
Speaker 4: a deal with your buddy, like you know. But people
Speaker 4: don't even really do that. I mean, that's again, that's like,
Speaker 4: that's pretty, that's tacky.
Speaker 2: I had no idea. Are there any that have been
Speaker 2: named recently where you know they'll name one after like
Speaker 2: David Bowie or I don't know.
Speaker 4: There's a genus of Gobi's called Zappa Oh really, Yeah,
Speaker 4: that's a while that's from a while ago.
Speaker 2: How I wonder why did he get a because.
Speaker 4: The guy who studied them love Frank Zappa Boom. And
Speaker 4: the awesome thing is it's a mud skipper. Do you
Speaker 4: know what that is? No, these crazy amphibious fish they have.
Speaker 4: They have these googly eyes on top of their head
Speaker 4: that they can like suck back down, these little water
Speaker 4: cups and their faces they come out of the water.
Speaker 4: They live in mud. They live in the mud. They
Speaker 4: live on land most of the time, and they just
Speaker 4: kind of around and they fight each other, and they
Speaker 4: have these crazy little fis displays, and they're like this big,
Speaker 4: just a little kit they're tiny.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's like half the size of a candy bar.
Speaker 4: They're far, they're itty bitty, and they're ferocious, ferocious.
Speaker 2: Do you have a favorite fish?
Speaker 4: I have several favorite fish. Have you ever seen a wahoo?
Speaker 4: It's beautiful. It's beautiful a way, who is kind of
Speaker 4: like a tune. It's a great, big, silvery pelagic fish,
Speaker 4: and it's just spectacular. It looks like a torpedo. It's
Speaker 4: like a silvery torpedo. I really like mud skippers. I
Speaker 4: like shrimp phobe. Some of the shrimp gobies I work
Speaker 4: on are just beautiful, very delicate, you know, colorful fishes,
Speaker 4: and they do all kinds of weird things.
Speaker 2: So, yeah, what's the what's their relationship with shrimp?
Speaker 4: Shrimp? Gobi's live with shrimp and burrows. The shrimp builds
Speaker 4: the burrow and the gobi lives with the shrimp. So
Speaker 4: it's a symbiotic relationship, like a mutualistic relationship. They help
Speaker 4: each other.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, they're like Burton nerdy, they are.
Speaker 4: And gobi's actually do this a lot. There's gobies that
Speaker 4: live in sponges and sea urchins and you know, all
Speaker 4: kinds of different places. They like, they're friendly, they like
Speaker 4: to participate in mutualisms. And a goby and a sh
Speaker 4: shrimp will the gobi is actually the watch dog. So
Speaker 4: the shrimp is blind. Oh this is this a great story.
Speaker 4: The shrimp is a blind This is nature, this is evolution,
Speaker 4: this is just all This is our world we live.
Speaker 4: This is a planet we live on with these things,
Speaker 4: which is kind of like just blows my mind. This
Speaker 4: is fishes. I think of my fishes every day with
Speaker 4: that sort of tone, like this is on our planet
Speaker 4: with us. Are these creatures so shrimps and gooby's. The
Speaker 4: shrimp is blind. The gobi watches, sits on the bottom
Speaker 4: and watches and is a guard dog. The little shrimp
Speaker 4: builds the burrow and takes care of the burrow. And
Speaker 4: they are in touch with each other. They communicate via
Speaker 4: a tactile communication system, a touch system. What the antennae
Speaker 4: of the shrimp are very long, and the antennae of
Speaker 4: the shrimp. As the shrimp, you know, scrumples around and works,
Speaker 4: it keeps in contact with the gobi's body, and the
Speaker 4: Gobi will flick its tail or move or dart back
Speaker 4: and forth to let the shrimp know what's going on
Speaker 4: if there's danger, if you can come out no way
Speaker 4: con cent true.
Speaker 2: Have you guys been able to figure out what different
Speaker 2: flicks mean?
Speaker 4: Well, not exactly, but you can see them. If you
Speaker 4: watch them, which I have done many many hours doing,
Speaker 4: you'll see the gobie like one hard flick is basically
Speaker 4: there's danger, and oftentimes the Gobi and the shrimp when
Speaker 4: they're sitting together, they just the gobey will move a
Speaker 4: little bit and the shrimp will you know, keep in touch.
Speaker 4: But it's real gentle like they'll almost kind of sing, yeah,
Speaker 4: it's okay, it's okay, it's okay, it's okay, like little
Speaker 4: little gentle movements.
Speaker 2: I just got goosebumps, like the full body goosebumps. That's crazy.
Speaker 2: That's bananas now is that language? When?
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's language? Oh yeah for shirts language? Of course
Speaker 4: they're communicating.
Speaker 2: God, that's nuts.
Speaker 4: They're rare in collections because they're very, very difficult to catch.
Speaker 2: Are they just too quick?
Speaker 4: They're very quick?
Speaker 2: So then do you have to just have certain nets
Speaker 2: like you were saying, plankedon nets or set up traps?
Speaker 4: That doesn't work. Actually, you have to use a spear gun,
Speaker 4: a spear gun. You have to use a spear gun.
Speaker 4: It's it's this crazy complicated way. You have to go
Speaker 4: down there with a spear gun. You fit the spear
Speaker 4: gun out with like a blade or a like a
Speaker 4: pented dent like prongs, so it's like almost like a shovel,
Speaker 4: and the sand is very loose, and the goby's very
Speaker 4: fast and very good at its job. And you what
Speaker 4: you do is you wait. You have to wait, let
Speaker 4: them calm down till the shrimp and the gobi you're
Speaker 4: both out of the burrow and then you shoot the burrow.
Speaker 4: You shoot the burrow, the fish and the shrimp run
Speaker 4: and then you chase them and you catch them one
Speaker 4: by one.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, So you might be doing that all day.
Speaker 4: Oh my gosh. Yeah, it's very difficult.
Speaker 2: I have the dumbness question. Please dinosaurs, Right, we've got
Speaker 2: a meteor boom, dinosaurs, goodbye. Fish under water the whole time,
Speaker 2: so they were just chill and fine. There were losses, okay,
Speaker 2: there were losses, okay.
Speaker 4: But not to the extent that the terrestrial anomurs animals
Speaker 4: suffered in the Cretaceous Tertiary extinction. The media that killed
Speaker 4: the dinosaurs did affect fishes. In fact, it killed a
Speaker 4: lot of the bigger predatory fishes, larger sort of top
Speaker 4: of the food chain fishes. There was an event a
Speaker 4: lot earlier, at the n Permium extinction that that was
Speaker 4: much worse for oceans. So it was just a different
Speaker 4: type of extinction, different different causes. So yeah, it was
Speaker 4: a more like there were like volcanoes and sulfur and
Speaker 4: climate change and the ocean got acidic and it was
Speaker 4: very bad. And that's kind of what we're watching out
Speaker 4: for now because those things are very very bad and
Speaker 4: that kills a lot of the ocean life.
Speaker 2: Okay. So there was the n permium and then there
Speaker 2: was the cape kk yeah exactly. Okay, Yeah, I didn't
Speaker 2: know the difference between them. Thank you very much of that.
Speaker 2: I'm sure people ask you this day in and day out.
Speaker 2: Do you eat fish?
Speaker 4: Yes? I do eat fish, Okay, for fish, I always
Speaker 4: recommend this is and it's serious. I mean, this is
Speaker 4: one again one of those things we got to watch
Speaker 4: out for. What the ocean. Don't eat most kinds of
Speaker 4: wild cott tuna, do not eat orange roughy. For your convenience,
Speaker 4: you can go to seafood watch dot org. Okay, and
Speaker 4: the Monterey Bay Aquarium has a list and it's always changing.
Speaker 4: They're always updating it. But a lot of farmed fishes
Speaker 4: fine to eat. You know, it's it's done responsibly, you know,
Speaker 4: ecologically conscious. And you can also check and see if
Speaker 4: it's if the seafood that you're buying is MSc certified
Speaker 4: Miss Marine Stewardship Council.
Speaker 2: Certainly, Okay, I didn't know about that. Ye what about fish?
Speaker 2: Fish is getting it on? There's some weird, weird behavior
Speaker 2: any that you tell people at cocktail parties.
Speaker 4: Well, a lot of the gobies that I study are
Speaker 4: sex changers. What, yes, they will start out a lot
Speaker 4: of them, the ones, some of the ones that live
Speaker 4: right off our coast are start their lives. They're all
Speaker 4: born as females, and then the biggest one turns into
Speaker 4: a male. Yeah, no way, and it kind of runs
Speaker 4: the hair. And then if he dies, the next biggest
Speaker 4: female turns into a male. And there's ones that go
Speaker 4: the other way too that they're all male except for
Speaker 4: a big female.
Speaker 2: How do they do that?
Speaker 4: It's just it's just like you know, the freshwater saltwater.
Speaker 4: They have a really good kidney, you know, male and female.
Speaker 4: They have a really flexible gonad and it just changes.
Speaker 2: Do they have an X and Y chromosome?
Speaker 4: They do, Yeah, they have a system that's similar to ours.
Speaker 4: But the thing is is that, I mean, remember a female,
Speaker 4: female's the ground state. I mean, being male is kind
Speaker 4: of like a like an extra little birth defect that
Speaker 4: gets like hammered on there at the end. And so
Speaker 4: turning turning a female going and turning too a male
Speaker 4: going is what happens to all human males.
Speaker 2: Oh hey, uh, misogynists boo.
Speaker 4: Yeah, right, Yeah, you can switch it. The gonuts come
Speaker 4: from the same tissues. You can switch them back and forth.
Speaker 2: That's true. I forget that. So the biggest one I
Speaker 2: wonder if they do it by by will? Are they
Speaker 2: like boop? Okay, here I go.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, they start to feel it, they start to
Speaker 4: feel it.
Speaker 2: Boom oh unbelievable everyone, And you know everyone always talks
Speaker 2: about the anglerfish. Yeah, the male just kind of grows
Speaker 2: into the female.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Is that a good one for cocktail parties?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 4: Yeah, people people know that. They're like, you know, the
Speaker 4: only problem is people know that one. Now that's kind
Speaker 4: of old news.
Speaker 2: Okay, to sum up the lore of the anglerfish in
Speaker 2: a few seconds, here we go very unsightly but majestic
Speaker 2: deep sea lady anglerfish has this glowing, dankled angle on
Speaker 2: her head and a vicious underbite with these jagged ass teeth.
Speaker 2: And the male is tiny and he could barely feed
Speaker 2: himself with his little baby mouth. So he finds a
Speaker 2: lady anglerfish and he gnaws into her side, thus dissolving
Speaker 2: his lips and her flesh and fuses them into one,
Speaker 2: and then he just kind of feeds off nutrients in
Speaker 2: her blood. Gets absorbed into her body and then supplies
Speaker 2: her with sperm when she needs it. He's kind of
Speaker 2: like that sad, sad guy at last Call. But it's
Speaker 2: dark and you feel ugly, so you go with it forever.
Speaker 4: I'm trying to think about what is a cool fish fact.
Speaker 4: I talk about mud skippers, which are crazy that they're fish.
Speaker 2: I read one story about how there's some oh god,
Speaker 2: now I can't remember, some fish who holds her eggs
Speaker 2: in her mouth.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, cardinalfish. Cardinalfish do it. Jawfish do it. Is fantastic.
Speaker 4: They will go sick lits. Sickle fishes, which you might
Speaker 4: know from aquaria, will sometimes to do it. It's just
Speaker 4: a way to keep the eggs safe.
Speaker 2: And then sometimes I've heard that a man will trick
Speaker 2: a man. A male fish will trick a female fish
Speaker 2: into thinking there's food. She opens her mouth and then
Speaker 2: he just is like, surprise, just surprise, I've fertilized your mouth.
Speaker 2: Does that happen.
Speaker 4: What usually happens is that the eggs, yeah, it can. Well,
Speaker 4: Usually what happens is the eggs can't fertilize right away either,
Speaker 4: because she'll lay the eggs. He'll fertilize them and she'll
Speaker 4: scoop them up, or she'll scoop them up and then
Speaker 4: he'll fertilize them in her mouth. You can picture that, right, Yeah, sure,
Speaker 4: it's biology. It's not bad.
Speaker 2: We don't judge, I mean, but the main thing with
Speaker 2: fish is you've got to make a lot of babies
Speaker 2: hope they survive exactly exactly.
Speaker 4: And the idea is that the lower the amount of
Speaker 4: care that you put into your babies, the more you've
Speaker 4: got to have. Right, So, like if you're just gonna
Speaker 4: blow them out too the wind, like a seed or
Speaker 4: fish egg, you know, into the water, you gotta have
Speaker 4: a bunch of them. If you're gonna take care of them,
Speaker 4: you might have fewer. And if a mouth breweder is
Speaker 4: just gonna have a calp, be hindred, whereas a spawner
Speaker 4: broadcast spawner might have a couple thousand a broadcast spawner
Speaker 4: broadcast spawner broadcasting to you, yes.
Speaker 2: Is that just like holding eggs out of a moving
Speaker 2: car and you just see.
Speaker 4: It's like you salt the fields just everywhere.
Speaker 2: Although sharks have those cool sacks.
Speaker 4: Yeah, sharks, sharks are have some lay eggs like that,
Speaker 4: and some actually have live young and some fish have
Speaker 4: live young too. They have a few live young, but
Speaker 4: it's rare.
Speaker 2: And sharks are fish. Sharks are fish? Does that ever
Speaker 2: trip people up? I always feel like sharks are in
Speaker 2: their own category because people are there. They have such
Speaker 2: a different place in society than the rest of the fish,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 4: Well, and they aren't different. I mean, they are a
Speaker 4: different evolutionary group than fishes, that's true, but they are
Speaker 4: you know, And like I said, most people the general
Speaker 4: term fish. They just think, oh, it's a vertebrate animal
Speaker 4: that lives in the water, and they're maybe not anything vertebrate,
Speaker 4: but like you know, an animal like us with like
Speaker 4: heads and a back and limbs and eyes. So yeah,
Speaker 4: sharks fall into that category.
Speaker 2: In that case, I have so many questions from listeners.
Speaker 2: Oh and I rapid fire please Okay, but before we
Speaker 2: take questions from you, our beloved listeners, we're going to
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Speaker 2: Okay, your questions all right, so I'll just rapid fire, okay,
Speaker 2: as quick as you can answer great, although sometimes I
Speaker 2: know these are complicated questions.
Speaker 4: Okay, okay.
Speaker 2: Greg wants to know how has climate change affected fish
Speaker 2: species and fish populations across the world, and how are
Speaker 2: plastic and other pollution affecting fish biology and health.
Speaker 4: Number one, fishes are moving like we will see things
Speaker 4: off the coast California, we never used to see because
Speaker 4: they came from warmer waters to the south. So with
Speaker 4: fishes that can move, our moving in response to climate change.
Speaker 4: What is plastic? Very very bad? The number one thing
Speaker 4: that I would say to people when they say to me,
Speaker 4: what can I do sort of for the planet and
Speaker 4: for the oceans, is watch it with your plastic. Keep
Speaker 4: your plastic. Like, if you are using plastic, fine, but
Speaker 4: recycle it, don't you know, don't let it get into
Speaker 4: the ocean. Be careful what you let into the waterways.
Speaker 2: I went to Hawaii. I got to go for a
Speaker 2: job and I got to see I know. I was
Speaker 2: mostly in hotels and in donut shops. It was it's
Speaker 2: a weird job, but I but I walked by the
Speaker 2: marina and it looked like a beautiful aquarium and like
Speaker 2: a Durrito's bag just floated by, and I was like,
Speaker 2: this is a picture of dystopia. What have we done?
Speaker 4: Plastic is very bad and it bugs me, bugs me
Speaker 4: like emotionally like it upsets me. So yes, please, please people,
Speaker 4: be careful with your plastic. Just recycle it. It's not
Speaker 4: even that hard. Just recycle it. Just recycle it. That's
Speaker 4: all I.
Speaker 2: Ask once again, recycle it. If you're like everything is bad?
Speaker 2: What do I do? I feel you? I feel you?
Speaker 2: So I looked it up. According to Greenpeace, here are
Speaker 2: some other ways you can cut down on plastics. You
Speaker 2: can carry a reusable bottle. We use a bunch of
Speaker 2: bottles all the time. You can say no to plastic straws,
Speaker 2: say no to disposable cutlery. You can avoid things with
Speaker 2: microbeads and carry a shopping bag. Look at that boom.
Speaker 2: You're already a better person, better than you were fifteen
Speaker 2: seconds ago. We did it. We save the planet.
Speaker 3: Yay.
Speaker 2: I also asked doctor Thacker in an email later something
Speaker 2: I forgot to address. It's regarding flesh colored, rope looking
Speaker 2: slimeballs which feed on decaying matter, which I hear is
Speaker 2: spectacularly gross to witness. So has she ever seen a
Speaker 2: hagfish eating it a whale? She said, I have never
Speaker 2: personally seen a hagfish eating a whale. But they do
Speaker 2: scavenger those carcasses down in the deep, and it's busy.
Speaker 2: Mainly they really go at it. Lots of hagfish flailing,
Speaker 2: she says. Right now, there's a bunch of hagfish having
Speaker 2: a whale picnic and the dark depths of the ocean.
Speaker 2: Is that crazy and you're just like making a sandwich
Speaker 2: and there's just a hagfish being like, this is my
Speaker 2: life anyway? Okay, Brian Edge wants to know the populations
Speaker 2: of any species changed for the better since orgs like
Speaker 2: Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch have come around.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, yes, absolutely. And one of the beautiful things about
Speaker 4: the ocean and working, you know, with fish and thinking
Speaker 4: about fisheries and climate change and whatever, and you know,
Speaker 4: even horrible scary things like coral bleaching, is that if
Speaker 4: we take action the problem, it will help, the problem
Speaker 4: will get better. Fisheries are rebounding that that have been protected,
Speaker 4: so it's definitely worth it.
Speaker 2: Is there a hope for coral reefs?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 2: Okay, yes, oh good, Yes, it is.
Speaker 4: It is. It is. It is a failure of will.
Speaker 4: It is not a failure. It's not that we don't
Speaker 4: know what to do. What we need to do is
Speaker 4: watch it with the carbon emissions. It's just that we
Speaker 4: don't have the will to do it. But if we
Speaker 4: were to take care and you know, cut that down,
Speaker 4: we would we would see some recovery in the coral reefs.
Speaker 4: I have no doubt you never hear about the ozone
Speaker 4: hole anymore. Remember that word. Yeah, yeah, and that's because
Speaker 4: that's because CFC's got banned and it hell and boom
Speaker 4: problem solved.
Speaker 2: Oh good to know that's actually that gives me a
Speaker 2: lot of hope. Mm hmmm. Michael Satambaga asks, throwing some
Speaker 2: shade here, why does some tilapia taste like mud while
Speaker 2: others don't.
Speaker 4: It depends on what it's eating and how it's farmed.
Speaker 4: But yeah, he's right, And like some cafesh you taste
Speaker 4: tastes terrible. You want to you want to go eat
Speaker 4: an alligator. You want to get yourself a farmed alligator.
Speaker 4: Don't eat a wild alligator because they just eat garbage
Speaker 4: and like pig carcasses. It's yucky ool.
Speaker 2: I didn't know that same problem with salapi. Do the
Speaker 2: farmed ones just eat like cereal and stuff?
Speaker 4: They do? Yeah, they're like you know, and they have
Speaker 4: like you know, alligator spa days and they eat good food.
Speaker 2: I'm sure I couldn't seem to find out what farmed
Speaker 2: alligators eat, but I did manage to find some Southern
Speaker 2: swamp boat captain hopping out in a muscle tank top
Speaker 2: into the bog water and feeding alligators marshmallows out of
Speaker 2: his mouth. And now I know that hell exists. H
Speaker 2: Jenna Kawala Calton. I say her name wrong every time
Speaker 2: I read it. Jenna. Okay, this is a I once
Speaker 2: heard this when I was twelve things. But can fish
Speaker 2: not feel pain or do they just have short memories?
Speaker 4: This is a common misconception, and the answer is, of
Speaker 4: course they feel pain. Of course they feel pain fish.
Speaker 4: You have to feel pain. Otherwise when a predator starts
Speaker 4: running at you, you wouldn't feel it and you just
Speaker 4: get eaten. So yes, they do feel pain.
Speaker 2: How are their memories?
Speaker 4: Well, probably not that great. Okay, but I mean, let's
Speaker 4: just you know what, let's just not hurt fish, right, Yeah,
Speaker 4: don't make them feel pain. Don't make them feel pain.
Speaker 4: Why do they need to feel pain?
Speaker 2: What kind of brains do they have?
Speaker 4: They have brains like ours, but simpler, but the same
Speaker 4: basic the same basic you know road map, same basic nerves,
Speaker 4: same basic vertebrate brain, So.
Speaker 2: They can feel pain. I'm sorry fish. Joe wants to
Speaker 2: know there are some highly weird species in the deep ocean.
Speaker 2: Do you have a favorite one you like to bring
Speaker 2: up at parties, which I think I just asked you this.
Speaker 4: Sorry, Joe, No, that's okay. The deep sea fish is.
Speaker 4: The thing about deep sea fish is that's hilarious is
Speaker 4: that most of them are small.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, really a little if.
Speaker 4: I just yesterday I was looking at a fossil, beautiful
Speaker 4: fossil of something called a hatchet fish, and there's one
Speaker 4: about the size of a silver dollar in our collection.
Speaker 4: It's got these beautiful little light organs and crazy teeth
Speaker 4: like even a You know, your average angler fish is
Speaker 4: not going to be any bigger than your fist, oh
Speaker 4: for the most part, and you're sort of toothy dragonfish
Speaker 4: looking thing. You know, those might be I don't know,
Speaker 4: those might be the size of a hot dog, maybe
Speaker 4: six seven, it's just long, not that big. Really, not
Speaker 4: a lot of them smaller.
Speaker 2: Now, Zoe Teplick wants to know aquariums, good or bad.
Speaker 2: Do fish suffer the same impact of captivity as mammals,
Speaker 2: and is a benefit of studying fish in captivity worth
Speaker 2: the harm it can cause the fish?
Speaker 4: Well, you know, fish, It's true, fish can get bored.
Speaker 4: It's not as bad as like a polar bear, polar
Speaker 4: bear in a studio apartment. You feel sad, right for
Speaker 4: the for the polar or something like a wolf, or
Speaker 4: you know, something that requires a big territory. It's not
Speaker 4: quite that bad, but they don't like being in captivity,
Speaker 4: It's true. And the bad thing about keeping fishing captivity,
Speaker 4: as far as I'm concerned, is the pet trade. I
Speaker 4: used to keep fishing, then I stopped because I found
Speaker 4: out about the terrible practices in the petrade. What happens, well,
Speaker 4: you just done. Guys will go on and dynamite fish.
Speaker 4: They'll siganaide fish, will just kill tons of fish. They
Speaker 4: get a few, just to get a few, and then
Speaker 4: they'll get shipped across the ocean and they'll be sick
Speaker 4: and it's just awful.
Speaker 2: It's horrible.
Speaker 4: I know.
Speaker 2: You dynamite, you kill a bunch and then whatever's alive
Speaker 2: you take. Yeah, that seems like a terrible idea.
Speaker 4: It is, it's it's but it's cheap and it's quick.
Speaker 4: Oh and the idea is that the percussion of the explosion,
Speaker 4: you know, can stun the fish and then the fish
Speaker 4: will float up and they just can't they swoop them up.
Speaker 4: That's terrible. Yeah, so, and that doesn't I mean, that
Speaker 4: doesn't happen everywhere all the time, but it does happen,
Speaker 4: especially for species that are in the pet trade.
Speaker 2: What about aquariums like you know, sanctioned on a Rey
Speaker 2: Bay Aquarium. How do you feel about those? I, you
Speaker 2: know what, I like them.
Speaker 4: And the reason is that fishes are so alien and
Speaker 4: the undersea world is so bizarre. I want people to
Speaker 4: be able to see it. I want people to look
Speaker 4: at those rock fish, look them in the eye, you know,
Speaker 4: think about the planet that they that we we share
Speaker 4: in common.
Speaker 2: So for being ambassadors to the public exactly then. But
Speaker 2: just like a fish tank in your dentist office, a fish.
Speaker 4: Tank in your dentists office, I mean there's and it's
Speaker 4: kind of like fish that you eat. There's fish that
Speaker 4: are farmed that are bread for captivity for pets, you know, goldfishes,
Speaker 4: all this fancy goldfish things like that. There's plenty of
Speaker 4: saltwater fishes that are that are bread in captivity. And
Speaker 4: that's fine. I mean keep again, keep keep a fish,
Speaker 4: keep a pet, look at it, appreciate it, understand it,
Speaker 4: learn about it. Just don't, you know, don't eat a
Speaker 4: wild catt tuna and don't don't care for a dynamite raised,
Speaker 4: dynamite hunted fish.
Speaker 2: I never knew that was a thing. That's so mean. Yeah,
Speaker 2: Casey Hanmer wants to know why do fish have so
Speaker 2: many bones all caps? Also, why are salmon so amazing?
Speaker 4: Fish do have a lot of bones? I mean, I
Speaker 4: suppose that's just what works for them. It's not. It's
Speaker 4: not again, it's not sort of a value judgment. The
Speaker 4: auto be flexible. They move in a lot of different directions.
Speaker 4: They have, you know, a lot of muscle motion going on.
Speaker 4: Like I said, they live in three D updown, on,
Speaker 4: side to side, back forward. And why are salmon so awesome? Yeah,
Speaker 4: you know, salmon are very old. Oh salmon, salmonoforms. It's
Speaker 4: an old group. Lot of cool things all around the world.
Speaker 4: And again it's kind of amazing that something can go
Speaker 4: back and forth been fresh and salt water.
Speaker 2: He wants to know. Also, why do some fish have
Speaker 2: two co dominant mating strategies, the alpha and the sneak.
Speaker 4: That is a complicated question. Okay, what he's talking about
Speaker 4: is a male and a female fish will mate and
Speaker 4: have babies, and the male oftentimes has to expend energy
Speaker 4: to do that. He's got to show off. Maybe he
Speaker 4: makes a little territory, makes a little nest and it
Speaker 4: does a little fancy dance and the lady says, oh,
Speaker 4: that's beautiful, and then lays her eggs. If you are
Speaker 4: a sneaker male, you can get away with circumventing that.
Speaker 4: And what a sneaker male does is just jumps in,
Speaker 4: sprays the semen, fertilizes the eggs, and whips out of there.
Speaker 4: What a fuck boy, right, okay, this is the fuck
Speaker 4: boy of the animal kingdom. No effort, just like you up.
Speaker 4: You know, it's two am, bam in and out and
Speaker 4: it's it's a strategy usually used by smaller males that
Speaker 4: can't sort of do a territory or do the behavior.
Speaker 4: They don't want to spend energy. But they'll sneak in
Speaker 4: and have a mate. They'll sneak in and have a mating.
Speaker 4: It's no good, no good, no yeh, Yeah.
Speaker 2: It happens in a lot of species. Mike Millshouer wants
Speaker 2: to know do fish sleep?
Speaker 4: They do?
Speaker 2: They do?
Speaker 4: They do?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 4: You sometimes parrot fish will kind of you'll see them
Speaker 4: on the bottom at night. They like wrap themselves in
Speaker 4: this bubble of mucking in, nice and cozy and just lovely.
Speaker 4: And yeah, they'll they'll, you know, they doze off. I
Speaker 4: wonder if they dream they must write some big uh,
Speaker 4: you know, big plagic fishes. They'll just you know, obviously
Speaker 4: they don't go down to the bottom to sleep, but
Speaker 4: they'll just you know, they'll doze off a little bit
Speaker 4: at a time. They'll sleep in little bursts.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I bet they have so many shark nightmares.
Speaker 4: Oh man, I wonder, right, I wonder what that must
Speaker 4: be like.
Speaker 2: I know, do you ever have to talk people down
Speaker 2: from sharkphobias?
Speaker 4: Sometimes? Yeah, but most people are pretty reasonable about it.
Speaker 2: I feel like the statistics are like so slim.
Speaker 4: Every yeah, exactly, And at this point everyone knows that,
Speaker 4: you know, you're more likely you know, to fall off
Speaker 4: a curb and break your neck than get yeah, beaten,
Speaker 4: you get eaten by a shark.
Speaker 2: Right, stay out of the water, I suppose, But hmm nah.
Speaker 2: Else bin Hey wants to know what kinds of fish
Speaker 2: are the most ethical? Oh to keep his pets. I
Speaker 2: love my beta fish, but whenever I'm in a pet
Speaker 2: store and see all the betas and their tiny cups,
Speaker 2: I feel sad. I want to take them all home.
Speaker 2: Should I contribute to that market or should I get
Speaker 2: a different kind of fish next time? Are beta raised
Speaker 2: in captivty?
Speaker 4: Excellent question, and thank you for being so you know,
Speaker 4: so responsible. Yeah, betafish are raising captivity. Go ahead and
Speaker 4: have as many as you like. Okay. Yeah.
Speaker 2: She also said, why are octopi so freaking scary? And
Speaker 2: do you think they'll take over the world? That's a
Speaker 2: question for a touthologists, right, get this?
Speaker 4: Okay, okay, that is a very good question. Here is
Speaker 4: the reason that we are not living in servitude to
Speaker 4: our cephalopod overlords. Even the biggest giant squid only lives
Speaker 4: for five years.
Speaker 3: What.
Speaker 4: Yes, I just found this out.
Speaker 2: Squids, octopuses they have very very.
Speaker 4: Short life spans. They got to go, They got to
Speaker 4: grow up, they got a mate, They gotta get it
Speaker 4: done because they're not hanging around it. The minute I
Speaker 4: heard that, I thought, holy shit. If one of those
Speaker 4: things ever figures out and lists one hundred, we're aft, We're.
Speaker 2: Out of here.
Speaker 4: It's over for us.
Speaker 2: I feel like they'd be better at computer programming than us.
Speaker 4: Oh, it wouldn't even make computer parking. It would be
Speaker 4: like telepathic control of everything.
Speaker 2: Yeah, do you think they're aliens?
Speaker 4: I feel like I'm not qualified to make that assessment.
Speaker 4: It could be, it could be, Okay.
Speaker 2: Craig wants to know how has uh oh, he wants
Speaker 2: to know how has farmed salmon, tilapia and catfish affected
Speaker 2: their species? But I feel like we kind of addressed that,
Speaker 2: right Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, farm fisher or fine. The species is fine, It's good, okay. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Craig Minami wants to know has a discovery that southern
Speaker 2: California is a nursery for great white sharks increased your
Speaker 2: research into their habits?
Speaker 4: Not me personally, but plenty of people. Yeah, oh yeah,
Speaker 4: this is a great place to be if you want
Speaker 4: to work on sharks. Like I said, we're getting fish
Speaker 4: up in soun of the California that used to be
Speaker 4: found much farther to the south, including hammerhead sharks. The
Speaker 4: sharks will follow the seals, I mean the big fishes
Speaker 4: follow the little fishes. They follow the prey items. So
Speaker 4: a if the seals move around, the sharks will go
Speaker 4: after him. The white sharks dang.
Speaker 2: John Worster wants to know when a fisherman catches a fish.
Speaker 2: The hook usually goes in the lip of the fish.
Speaker 2: Do the fish feel pain when that happens? That's a yes. Yeah,
Speaker 2: he says, I don't go fish anymore, so the answer
Speaker 2: will not affect me at all.
Speaker 4: Thank you for again, thank you for these these comments.
Speaker 4: I love because they're responsible. You know, these are these
Speaker 4: people are trying to do the right thing. They're caring,
Speaker 4: and I encourage this.
Speaker 2: I do feel like fish are people are sensitive to
Speaker 2: fish because people know that they are getting boned with
Speaker 2: climate change. You know.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, well good, yeah, I mean that's great that
Speaker 4: I encourage that. Well done people.
Speaker 2: Jessica Chamberlain has a personal question. She asked fish ever
Speaker 2: bite people, specifically bass or other dwelling fish. I'm trying
Speaker 2: to sett a little bit. I'm positive a fish bit
Speaker 2: me while we were swimming in Whitewater Lake in Wisconsin
Speaker 2: last summer, but my husband disagrees.
Speaker 4: It's definitely possible to the fish bit you. It's definitely possible.
Speaker 2: Oh, Jessica's husband, you have been proven wrong.
Speaker 4: They'd have to be u you know, a little confused.
Speaker 4: But maybe the water's muddy, fish bumps ind you bite it? Yeah, couldppen?
Speaker 4: I mean they don't usually obviously attack things bigger than themselves.
Speaker 4: They usually eat little insects. But yeah, it's possible a fish.
Speaker 4: Goodbite you sure fish? You know, see a little see
Speaker 4: your finger.
Speaker 2: Some take a little bite, little level. Well don't And
Speaker 2: I'm saying, yeah, yeah, she got a fish kiss.
Speaker 4: That's exactly you shouldn't be sad about it.
Speaker 2: Be happy. Krista Chrexler asked do seahorses actually mate for
Speaker 2: life and why do the males carry the babies. I'm
Speaker 2: basically wondering, why are seahorses so cool?
Speaker 4: Oh my gosh, there's so many reasons. What a great
Speaker 4: group of fish those are. They do not mate for life,
Speaker 4: they'll mate with many different females throughout their life. Why
Speaker 4: does the male carry the babies? You know, I'm actually
Speaker 4: not sure they did. They've got a pouch. They do
Speaker 4: carry them around you usually, So something like that can
Speaker 4: be explained by the idea that the female can make
Speaker 4: more young because of it somehow. You know, Mason movie,
Speaker 4: she has many clutches going at a time. I'm sorry,
Speaker 4: I'm sorry that one you have to google.
Speaker 2: That's a great one.
Speaker 4: Yeah, let me good question. That's a good question.
Speaker 2: I love that she's maybe outsourcing. Yeah, you know what
Speaker 2: I mean. Side note, I have long thought that fashionable
Speaker 2: stay at home dads wearing baby porns walking kiddos down
Speaker 2: the block to the cold pressed juicery while their mom
Speaker 2: is out kicking ass should be called colloquially seahorses. What
Speaker 2: do you think, Like, Melanie's husband is a total sea horse,
Speaker 2: he's the best. Well, yeah, I quit my job at
Speaker 2: the tech firm and I'm just seahorsing for now. Well, uh,
Speaker 2: Julie's at the oncology practice. Like, can we start that please?
Speaker 2: Billy Marino asked to fish develop emotional attachments to other fish,
Speaker 2: such as those they are related to, or even those
Speaker 2: that they're are in a school with. If so, how
Speaker 2: do those emotions manifest for us to study?
Speaker 4: Like do the go be in the shrimp like they?
Speaker 4: I feel like they would have to write, but I
Speaker 4: think there's no evidence of that. In fact, even fishes
Speaker 4: like fish will protect they're young if they know they're
Speaker 4: they're young. But some fishes, actually the young have to
Speaker 4: exhibit a different coloration pattern and show a different behavior
Speaker 4: just so that the adult doesn't think they're an enemy
Speaker 4: or a prayer. Oh wow, So yeah, you know, I
Speaker 4: don't know. I don't think so. I mean, you fish,
Speaker 4: two pair bond, they'll pair bond for sure, Like two
Speaker 4: an enemy fishes in an an enemy. Those guys will pairamond.
Speaker 4: They must feel something. Yeah, they can't just be dead inside.
Speaker 4: There must be something. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean they're cold blooded, but they're not cold hearted.
Speaker 4: That's that's it, exactly, Ali perfectly put. I feel like,
Speaker 4: if you pair bond you can feel love. You must
Speaker 4: be able, would you yeah? Exactly.
Speaker 2: Okay, well we've settled that. That's it.
Speaker 4: That's solidly, scientifically settled. I'm a doctor. Now.
Speaker 2: Alicia or Sheevil, asks what's your favorite scary or weird fish?
Speaker 2: She loves personally the wolf eel.
Speaker 4: Just for the visual.
Speaker 2: Wolf eels are kind of this like granite colored gray
Speaker 2: long eel normal, but when it comes to that face,
Speaker 2: they have this angry countenance of Stadler and Waldorf, those
Speaker 2: two muppets who sit in the balcony and judge everyone.
Speaker 2: They're great, please look them up. And then tattoo went
Speaker 2: on your back.
Speaker 4: Okay, first of all, great choice. Okay, my scariest fish
Speaker 4: is related to childhood imaginary trauma. I am terrified a stonefish.
Speaker 4: Stonefish are tropical, they live in the sand, they're camouflage,
Speaker 4: they have big spines, and they're deadly venomous. W yes,
Speaker 4: and I, for some reason was terrified of stepping on
Speaker 4: a stone fish, which is kind of like being terrified
Speaker 4: of being my great white shark.
Speaker 2: They'll never it's not gonna happen. When am I ever
Speaker 2: gonna get Probably never? So have you gotten over it?
Speaker 4: Not really?
Speaker 2: Oh no, when you wear what are their habitats.
Speaker 4: Into Pacific reefs? Mostly?
Speaker 2: Okay?
Speaker 4: Yeah, so I just beeral careful when I'm walking around.
Speaker 2: Do you wear like little footsy footsy booties.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we're a little fitty. But if I'm walking, but
Speaker 4: usually I have swim and soon we'reing fins.
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, they probably can't stab you through a fin.
Speaker 4: No, nine, Yeah, exactly. That's the thing. It's an irrational fear.
Speaker 2: Stone fishes, stone cold fishes.
Speaker 4: That's it.
Speaker 2: Aaron Kelly last questions, It says, I have a billion
Speaker 2: questions because I'm training at an aquarium. Oh well, great,
Speaker 2: thank you.
Speaker 4: Yes, But she.
Speaker 2: Needs to know needs to know about lumpfish. Why are
Speaker 2: they that color? I had never seen one until recently.
Speaker 2: She's fascinated, she said, specifically the teal color, and why
Speaker 2: are they jelly like? And why do they make good caviar?
Speaker 2: What is a lumpfish?
Speaker 4: Oh she's talking about Okay, all.
Speaker 2: Right, So Aaron's talking about a fish called Cyclopteris lumpus,
Speaker 2: which come on that name, the name wins. They're also
Speaker 2: called lump suckers, which is another a plus insult in
Speaker 2: a pinch when you can't swear. So they must have
Speaker 2: healthy self esteems to deal with the name. But can
Speaker 2: you imagine if our species was called like a lump ape?
Speaker 2: How savage is that lumpfish or like whatever? Anyway, they
Speaker 2: are lumpy and they suck things, and the caviar is expensive,
Speaker 2: and not much is known about them. So I hereby
Speaker 2: implore Aaron Kelly you're listening, please become an chthyologist and
Speaker 2: study them, no pressure. She's talking about a deep sea fish.
Speaker 4: I don't know that much about though, So so yeah,
Speaker 4: I was there's a lumpfish that lives off the coast
Speaker 4: here that's really cute and bright orange, which in this
Speaker 4: you know, in our cal forest, that's kind of a
Speaker 4: camouflage color. But yeah, this one lumpish caviar I'm not sure.
Speaker 2: I gotta look it up.
Speaker 4: Yeah, look it up.
Speaker 2: If do you have any advice for someone who is
Speaker 2: who is trying to be an chthyologist? Learn how spellet Yeah?
Speaker 4: Learn has spell a number one? Yeah? Learn? Take a
Speaker 4: lot of biology classes. You know, go take as much
Speaker 4: organism biology as you can and get out in the
Speaker 4: ocean as much as you can and swim and die.
Speaker 4: Learn to die. If you want to be a professional
Speaker 4: marine biologist, learn how to dive. Get good at it.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I have never been diving, but I have
Speaker 2: someone who's listener who offered to take me diving.
Speaker 4: It's amazing.
Speaker 2: Okay, should I go?
Speaker 4: Yeah, you should totally go.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, it's amazing. But if you need there's if
Speaker 4: you need to work, you know, doing it for work,
Speaker 4: you gotta really like you study it, you gotta mean it. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: you gotta study it. But just but but it's wonderful.
Speaker 4: Definitely go diving.
Speaker 2: What do you hate about your job? What are you like?
Speaker 2: This part sucks?
Speaker 3: Like what? I have an easy, easiest answer. Okay, malaria
Speaker 3: in a word, malaria. I got malaria in the field
Speaker 3: one time.
Speaker 4: It sucked and in fact I didn't I had the
Speaker 4: kind of I caught its tropical malaria, and it was
Speaker 4: the kind of malaria where it can go you get infected,
Speaker 4: it can go in your liver and hide. And so
Speaker 4: I didn't actually know I had malaria until like ten
Speaker 4: months later. I'm like in my house reading a book,
Speaker 4: and all of a sudden there was a spike in
Speaker 4: one hundred and four degree fever and like shaking, like
Speaker 4: I was having a seizure. Horrible, no idea what was
Speaker 4: going on. My husband spotted it right.
Speaker 2: Away, and did is he a scientist?
Speaker 4: Yeah? He he troubles. He's a marinebil just als, so
Speaker 4: he studies snail, so he troubles with me. He was
Speaker 4: in field with me. Oh yeah, he's gone. We do
Speaker 4: all our field work together. And I went to the
Speaker 4: doctor and I tried to explain to them that I
Speaker 4: had malaria. But you later in Los Angeles, they thought
Speaker 4: it was crazy.
Speaker 2: What did they think it was?
Speaker 4: They thought I was nuts. They thought I had the flu,
Speaker 4: They thought I had maybe I had meningitis. And then
Speaker 4: you can to diagnose malaria, they have to take a
Speaker 4: blood sample while the parasite's active, while you're having the fever,
Speaker 4: while you're having the shaking, and that happened at night.
Speaker 4: I had to go to the emergency room. They didn't
Speaker 4: believe me. They were like, you're insane. I said, please, please, please,
Speaker 4: just take a blood sample. Finally got them to take
Speaker 4: the blood sample, and then I just bounced because I
Speaker 4: was pissed. And the next day, early in the morning,
Speaker 4: phone rings, it's County Health. So do they have to
Speaker 4: put you into registring? They wanted to know what the what.
Speaker 4: They wanted to know what I was doing turning up
Speaker 4: in Los Angeles with the malaria. I said, I was
Speaker 4: in New Guinea, but it was ten months ago, eleven
Speaker 4: months ago.
Speaker 2: But did you get just the shit bitten out of
Speaker 2: you when you were there?
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's horrible. There's so much malaria in New Guinea.
Speaker 4: And we had take and I was taking anti millarials,
Speaker 4: but I wasn't taking strong enough ones. There are some
Speaker 4: really strong ones that also tend to cause psychosisops And yeah,
Speaker 4: you can't be being psychotic when you're diving. You'll get killed.
Speaker 4: You'll get you get killed, or you'll kill someone else.
Speaker 4: Oh my god, Oh that's not a good pair. So
Speaker 4: I took a chance roll the dice loss ended up
Speaker 4: with malaria.
Speaker 2: There.
Speaker 4: It is worst thing about my job.
Speaker 2: Malaria. Did you how long are you out with malaria?
Speaker 4: Once you take the meds, it goes away right away.
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, so you'd easy to treat. You don't get
Speaker 2: to like binge on a season of anything. Oh my god,
Speaker 2: no god, all for the love of fish worth it.
Speaker 2: What do you love of your job? What's the best best, best, best, best.
Speaker 4: Best best best part? And there are so many. It
Speaker 4: is a great job. It's just figuring these things out.
Speaker 4: I love learning about the fish. I love figuring out
Speaker 4: their evolution. I love figuring out how the evolution of
Speaker 4: fishes correspond to the evolution of the planet and through
Speaker 4: geologic time. I love the work I do popularizing science.
Speaker 4: I love, you know, doing the Curiosity show on our
Speaker 4: on our YouTube channel. I love posting all the behind
Speaker 4: the scenes stuff on Instagram. I love the people I
Speaker 4: work with. It's a blast.
Speaker 2: Where are you off to next?
Speaker 4: Well, next, I'm going to Actually I'm going to London,
Speaker 4: which is just for collections work, and then in the
Speaker 4: fallow be going back to Australia to work on some
Speaker 4: of the Australian stream fishes that are there.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, do you how long are you in
Speaker 2: Australia when you're when you're working the usually like a
Speaker 2: month or two. Do you come back with an accent?
Speaker 4: No? No, No, Let's see what I come back with.
Speaker 4: I came back with an appreciation for frions and meat
Speaker 4: pies and totally blase by kangaroos, blase about that whatever.
Speaker 2: They're so meta everywhere. Yeah, what's free on a friand.
Speaker 4: Is a kind of muffin. It's a little baked muffin.
Speaker 4: It's made out of almonds. It's really good.
Speaker 2: Why do we have them here?
Speaker 4: Get on me? Yeah, I don't know. Colokies show people
Speaker 4: pick this up. Freons they're so.
Speaker 2: Good, you guys, you guys, come on, why aren't we
Speaker 2: all eating freons. They're derived from French Financier cookies and
Speaker 2: their almond meal and egg whites. But they're also kind
Speaker 2: of like a muffin and they come in raspberry and lemon,
Speaker 2: and oftentimes they're gluten free, in case you live on
Speaker 2: the West Coast where gluten's illegal and bonus, I highly
Speaker 2: suggest you look up recipes on YouTube because everyone making
Speaker 2: them has Australian accents and they say things like this
Speaker 2: recipes super easy to mike, so I'll give it a go.
Speaker 2: And if you haven't tried making free on's before, we
Speaker 2: should give it a go because it's so simple to do.
Speaker 2: All right, that's my new mission. If I find myself
Speaker 2: in a donut shop somewhere, I'll working. Yeah, which happens?
Speaker 2: And how can people find you?
Speaker 4: You can? Well, I'm on our westside NHM dot org.
Speaker 4: I do a little behind the scenes show called the
Speaker 4: Curiosity Show, which is at NHM dot org slash Curiosity Show.
Speaker 4: I'm on Instagram and Twitter as thacfish thhackfish thackfish and yeah,
Speaker 4: come and come visit the museum, you know, come look
Speaker 4: at our exhibits, come look around, take it behind the
Speaker 4: scenes store. Maybe I'll show you our collection.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, yeah, seriously, if anyone has it's like
Speaker 2: a love of fish. I took a tour at the
Speaker 2: NHM and ended up volunteering here and like, I can't
Speaker 2: tell you, it was a life changer. So if there's
Speaker 2: a museum nearby, sign up to volunteer. It's one of
Speaker 2: the best things I've ever done.
Speaker 4: Oh, it's wonderful. Yes, I agree, completely, absolutely, come.
Speaker 2: On down, totally change my life. Thank you so much
Speaker 2: for doing this.
Speaker 4: Oh you're so welcome. My pleasure, my pleasure at joy Yeah, Gobi's.
Speaker 2: Ugh, how obsessed with her? Are you right? I'm like
Speaker 2: fully so follow her on the platforms. Catch the Curiosity
Speaker 2: Show on YouTube and to follow Ologies, We're at Ologies
Speaker 2: on Instagram and Twitter. I'm at Ali ward one L
Speaker 2: on Twitter Instagram. You can join the Ologies Facebook group
Speaker 2: where we all talk about the episode. We share weird
Speaker 2: links and gross pictures. It's a wonderful group of folks.
Speaker 2: No one in there is a clotwad which I love.
Speaker 2: To support Ologies. You can head two ologiesmirch dot com,
Speaker 2: get yourself a nine number two, or you can make
Speaker 2: a donation if you want at patreon dot com. Ologies. Also, honestly,
Speaker 2: just tweeting, instagramming, telling friends about the show helps it
Speaker 2: grow so much. It's crazy to me to see the
Speaker 2: numbers go up every month. Do spread the word. Thank
Speaker 2: you as always to Steven Ray Morris for editing, Aaron
Speaker 2: Talbert and Hannah Lippo for running the Ologies Facebook group,
Speaker 2: Shannon Feltis and Bonnie Dutch for running Ologiesmerch dot com.
Speaker 2: Nick Thorburn wrote and performed the Ologies theme song. He's
Speaker 2: in a band called Islands. It's a very good band.
Speaker 2: You stuck it out through their credits. Thank you. Congratulations.
Speaker 2: So here's my secret of the week. Right now. I
Speaker 2: have a blanket over my head because this room is
Speaker 2: really echoey, So I've been recording this entire thing with
Speaker 2: just a full blanket over my head. And I can
Speaker 2: hear the people in the room next to me, and
Speaker 2: I think one of them has a flu because she's
Speaker 2: been coughing a lot and she stopped coughing, and I
Speaker 2: don't know if she just straight up died. And I
Speaker 2: also don't know if they can hear me, but I'm
Speaker 2: really nervous that they can. I'm also not wearing pants
Speaker 2: because I just forgot to pack pajamas, so it was like,
Speaker 2: I'm just no pants, so what. Also, I turn the
Speaker 2: heat up in hotels to like eighty degrees. I don't
Speaker 2: really know why I do it. It's just it's so cozy,
Speaker 2: but I am sweating. Okay, thanks so much for listening. Remember,
Speaker 2: go out ask smart people all the dumb questions you want.
Speaker 2: They love it, and do join us next week, where
Speaker 2: I will maybe be wearing pants. I'm not gonna make
Speaker 2: any guarantees. Bye bye, pack adermatology, hombology, crypto zoology, lithology
Speaker 2: and technology, meteorology, pathology, ethnology, zereology, elinology,