Name that fish!

A frame grab from my Gulf of Mexico video. Can you name
the different fish?

If science was a game show, it would take place in Japan. Japanese game shows are ridiculous - you know what I'm talking about. Contestants have to hold an orange between their chin and their chest and transfer it to another contestant, all while standing on a wobbly rotating platform. Or they slide through a tunnel of slime while a fan blows glitter on their faces to reach the prize: a golden banana. The combinations of elements don't even make sense, but the audiences are always super invested in the contestants' success. If you don't know what I'm talking about, just do an online search for Takeshi's Castle.

I don't (usually) have a live audience when I'm science-ing, but it can feel like a ridiculous challenge nonetheless. The game show I'm playing this week is called Name that Fish!

I'm going through all the video we recorded using a remotely-operated vehicle from the Gulf of Mexico last summer. Working at mesophotic depths, our team surveyed shipwrecks and paired natural hard-bottom habitats to learn about their history and biology. It's honestly my dream study design because I get to do one-on-one comparisons of shipwrecks and natural reefs. 

I started with the fish. As I watched the videos, I scribbled general diagrams of each species and tallied the number of individuals I saw. I took frame grabs from the video anytime I saw a new species. Then I went back through the frame grabs to identify each of them. It took several days, a comprehensive reference book, an illustrated poster, advice from a friend, and the internet to get a set of species names that I trusted. 

Atlantic spadefish, Chaetodipterus faber

Check out the frame grab at the top, from our dive on the CP Baker. The big fish is obvious - that's an amberjack, Seriola dumerili. Can you identify the small black fish swarming around that coral head? How about the pale fish in the background with the dark tails? You might find yourself squinting at the screen, enlarging the photo with your fingers on the mousepad, flipping furiously through a book to find the right chapter, or becoming a true game show contestant and phoning a friend. 

I'll give you a hint: the tiny black fish around the coral head are not native to the Gulf of Mexico. It took me at least three false IDs to figure that one out. I could tell by the shape that it was a damselfish, but its coloration and that conspicuous white spot did not match to any damselfish in my ID book. So I asked the internet, and sure enough, within a few clicks, I had found the regal demoiselle, Neopomacentrus cyanomos, native to the Indo-Pacific and introduced to the Gulf of Mexico. Success.

It's been a lot of work but also a lot of fun to identify all my fish. If this were really a game show, I'd probably be going home with some prize money!