Fish

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Enormous, weird fish washes up on an Australian beach. So, what is it?

Tim Dempsey

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This is certainly one very fishy encounter.

Two fishers stumbled across quite the surprise when they found a sunfish which had washed onto the beach at Coorong National Park in South Australia.

The photos, taken by Linette Grzelak, were posted on Facebook by National Parks South Australia on Tuesday, and boy, it’s a weird looking fish.

Grzelak told CNN they thought the fish was a piece of driftwood when they drove past it.

The strange-looking sea creature has since been identified by the South Australian Museum’s ichthyology manager Ralph Foster as an ocean sunfish (Mola mola), due to markings on its tail and the shape of its head. Read more…

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Oven-Roasted Salmon, Asparagus and New Potatoes

Tim Dempsey

Sheet Pan Salmon with Asparagus and New Potatoes

My dad pulled out a favorite recipe from his collection of decades old Food & Wine magazine to make and share with “the people on the website.”

A “discussion” then ensued between the rental units for at least half an hour along the lines of “What do you mean this is a favorite recipe? You always told me you didn’t like salmon.” “What are you talking about? I used to make this all the time.” “You’ve never made it in this house!…” and so on and so on.

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Fish Chowder

Tim Dempsey

Fish Chowder

My first job out of college was in Boston, in the financial district downtown. My local friends did their best to initiate this wide-eyed Californian into New England traditions of every sort, especially food.

We feasted on as many menu items as we could afford at the Union Oyster House and the No Name Restaurant, and $5/lb lobsters I would buy from the Italian fish monger across the street from where I lived in the North End.

One dish I could never get enough of was “chowdah”. Clam chowder, fish chowder, seafood chowder, whatever, I loved it.

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Brazilian Salmon Stew (Moqueca)

Tim Dempsey

Salmon Moqueca

One of the dishes Northern Brazil is known for is their “Moqueca“, a delicious savory fish stew made with a local white fish, bell peppers, tomatoes, onions, and coconut milk.

Several years ago a Brazilian friend of mine introduced to me a salmon version of this stew she had improvised, given that the typical Brazilian fish used for moqueca isn’t found around here.

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This fish hunts by spitting water at its prey

Tim Dempsey

The Archerfish of Southeast Asia and Australia spit at perched insects to knock them into the water for an easy meal. From KQED’s “Deep Look“:

“When the fish fires the shot,” (Wake Forest University biologist Morgan) Burnett explained, citing the work of other researchers in Germany who first used high-speed cameras to observe the projectiles in 2014, “the water leaves the mouth as essentially a very long stream. But during flight, the stream merges into a ball.”

The fish accomplishes this feat of timing through deliberate control of its highly-evolved mouthparts, in particular its lips, which act like an adjustable hose that can expand and contract while releasing the water.

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See a fantastically strange red seadragon on video for the first time

Tim Dempsey

Scientists declared the ruby seadragon a new species in 2015, but that was based on dead specimens in a museum. Now though, Scripps Institution of Oceanography biologist Greg Rouse who led the team that originally discovered the species, managed to find two of the wonderful fish swimming around the Recherche Archipelago, off the south coast of Western Australia. Each one is about 10 feet long. Just kidding. They’re 10 inches long. From National Geographic:

After four dives with a remote-controlled mini-submarine, they managed to film two ruby seadragons more than 167 feet underwater, as the fish swam through rocky gardens of sponges and nibbled at their prey, most likely tiny crustaceans called mysids…

…The footage confirms that ruby seadragons use a different means of camouflage than its closest relatives. Common and leafy seadragons are covered in leafy outgrowths meant to camouflage the fish as they swim through seagrasses. The ruby seadragon, however, lacks them—opting instead for a scarlet body, an efficient way to disguise itself from predators in the dark depths.

Most surprisingly, the video suggests that the ruby seadragon can use its curled tail to grasp objects.

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It's 2017 and it turns out there *are* still more fish in the sea

Tim Dempsey

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In 2015, researchers discovered a new species of seadragon, a kind of marine fish related to pipefish and seahorses.

Josefin Stiller, a graduate student at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego discovered the little ruby friend, dubbed the “Ruby Seadragon” by analyzing the DNA of preserved specimens.

Until now, no one has ever seen the shy ocean creature alive in the water. The only specimens studied have washed up on shores or been preserved in museum collections. 

Researchers traveled to beaches on Australia’s remote west coast to find the Ruby Seadragon.  Read more…

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