Deep-sea anglerfishes employ an incredible reproductive strategy. Tiny dwarfed males become permanently attached to relatively gigantic females, fuse their tissues and then establish a common blood circulation. In this way, the male becomes entirely dependent on the female for nutrient supply, like a developing fetus in the womb of a mother or a donated organ in a transplant patient.

In anglerfishes, this unusual phenomenon is called “sexual parasitism” and contributes to the reproductive success of these animals living in the vast space of the deep sea, where females and males otherwise rarely meet.

Now scientists from the Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and Epigenetics in Germany and the 91̽�� have figured out why female anglerfishes so readily accept their male mates. Their are published July 30 in Science.

The extraordinary reproductive strategy employed by deep-sea anglerfishes has posed an enigma that has persisted for a century, ever since the first attached fishes were discovered by an Icelandic fisheries biologist in 1920.

“How is it possible that genetically similar organisms — in this case, members of the same species — accept each other so readily when tissue rejection is the usual and expected result of any such union?” said co-author , professor emeritus at the 91̽��School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences. “Just witness the difficulties surrounding organ transplantation in humans. We now see great potential down the road for a better understanding of the problem.”

Deep-sea anglerfishes are found in all oceans around the world, yet the roughly 160 known species are extremely rare. They lure their prey in the inky-black ocean darkness at depths between 300 and 5,000 meters (980 and 16,400 feet) using a bioluminescent fishing apparatus placed on the tip of the snout — hence the “angler” in their common name. Their enormous, toothy mouth and expandable stomach enable them to capture and devour prey larger than themselves in a single instantaneous gulp.

Deep-sea anglerfish males are a fraction of the size of the females — in the most extreme cases, females may be more than 60 times the length and about a half-a-million times as heavy as the males. The males don’t have a luring apparatus; instead, most have large, well-developed eyes and huge nostrils, which help them home in on a species-specific chemical attractant emitted by the females.

For decades, researchers have wondered how this rare phenomenon happens in anglerfish. Several years ago, , a medical doctor and immunologist at the Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and Epigenetics in Germany, and the UW’s Pietsch, an ichthyologist and the world’s expert on anglerfishes, set out to study the genomes of different anglerfish species.

They began by looking at the structure of major histocompatibility (MHC) antigens. These molecules are found at the surface of the body’s cells and signal alarm to the immune system, when the cells are infected by a virus or a bacterium.

To make sure that all pathogens are efficiently recognized, the MHC molecules are extremely variable, so much so that it is hard to find identical or near-identical forms in any two individuals of a species. This feature is at the root of the tissue-matching problem that plagues human organ and bone marrow transplantation. To their great surprise, the researchers found that anglerfishes that utilize permanent attachment largely lack the genes that encode these MHC molecules, as if they had done away with immune recognition in favor of tissue fusion.

Additionally, they found that the function of killer T cells, which normally eliminate infected cells or attack foreign tissues during the organ rejection process, was also severely blunted, if not lost entirely, in anglerfishes. Further analysis also indicated that antibodies, another powerful weapon in the arsenal of immune defense, are missing in some anglerfish species.

“For humans, the combined loss of important immune facilities observed in anglerfishes would result in fatal immunodeficiency,” Boehm said.

The researchers found that anglerfishes lack the genes responsible for tissue rejection and instead use much improved innate facilities to defend themselves against infections, a most unexpected solution to a problem that is faced by all living things. In other words, their new type of immune system is very unusual among the tens of thousands of vertebrate species.

The study thus shows that despite several hundred million years of co-evolutionary partnership of innate and adaptive functions, vertebrates can survive without the adaptive immune response previously considered to be irreplaceable.

“We find it remarkable that the unusual mode of reproduction was invented several times independently in this group of fishes,” Pietsch said.

Although the details of the improved innate immune response in anglerfishes remain to be discovered, the results of this study point to potential strategies that enhance innate immune facilities in human patients who suffer the consequences of inborn or acquired impairment of immune facilities.

Other co-authors are Jeremy Swann, Stephen Holland and Malte Petersen of the Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and Epigenetics.

This work was supported by the Max Planck Society, the Ernst Jung Foundation for Science and Medicine, the European Research Council and the National Science Foundation.

For more information, contact Pietsch at twp@uw.edu and Boehm at boehm@ie-freiburg.mpg.de.

This post was adapted from a Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and Epigenetics .

Any old fish can swim. But what fish can walk, scoot, clamber over rocks, change color or pattern and even fight? That would be the frogfish.

The latest book by , 91̽��professor emeritus of aquatic and fishery sciences, explores the lives and habits of these unusual marine shorefishes. “” was published in March by Johns Hopkins University Press.

Pietsch, who is also curator emeritus of fishes at the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, has published over 200 articles and a dozen books on the biology and behavior of marine fishes. He wrote this book with , a faculty member at Northwest Indian College in Bellingham and its Salish Sea Research Center.

These walking fishes have stepped into the spotlight lately, with interest growing in recent decades. And though these predatory fishes “will almost certainly devour anything else that moves in a home aquarium,” Pietsch writes, “a cadre of frogfish aficionados around the world has grown within the dive community and among aquarists.” In fact, Pietsch said, there are three frogfish public groups on Facebook, with more than 6,000 members.

91̽��Notebook caught up with Pietsch for a conversation about his book and the unusual family of fishes it describes.

First, what is a frogfish?

Ted Pietsch: A member of a family of bony fishes, containing 52 species, all of which are highly camouflaged and whose feeding strategy consists of mimicking the immobile, inert, and benign appearance of a sponge or an algae-encrusted rock, while wiggling a highly conspicuous lure to attract prey.

This is a fish that “walks” and “hops” across the sea bottom, and clambers about over rocks and coral like a four-legged terrestrial animal but, at the same time, can jet-propel itself through open water. Some lay their eggs encapsulated in a complex, floating, mucus mass, called an “egg raft,” while some employ elaborate forms of parental care, carrying their eggs around until they hatch.

They are among the most colorful of nature’s productions, existing in nearly every imaginable color and color pattern, with an ability to completely alter their color and pattern in a matter of days or seconds. All these attributes combined make them one of the most intriguing groups of aquatic vertebrates for the aquarist, diver, and underwater photographer as well as the professional zoologist.

That’s interesting about their changing color and pattern. What determines the shade or pattern the fish adopts, and how quickly?

T.P.: The ability��to change coloration varies enormously among species. The Sargassum��Frogfish, for instance, can alter hue and pattern��almost instantly, especially in response to��stimulation, like courtship, spawning behavior, or aggression between competing males for which this species is famous — they fight until death!

Other frogfishes are more limited��in terms of the rate of change, but most are able to take on a nearly full��range of coloration from drab to highly colorful��within��a period of a few days, weeks, or months,��usually in response to their surroundings, that is, to better hide themselves among rocks, coral, or sponges, etc. In many species radical chromatic variety and change��seems almost infinite.

Do frogfish use their appendages for other purposes as well?

T.P.: The “arms” and “legs” are used for walking and climbing over rocks and coral, but they also serve as planing devices when swimming in open water, for steering and braking.

Where do frogfishes live?��

T.P.: Frogfishes are found just about everywhere in shallow-water, tropical and subtropical habitats of all major seas and oceans of the world, except the Mediterranean Sea, and why not the latter, no one seems to know for sure.

Who discovered the frogfish, and when?

T.P.: Knowledge of frogfishes began to accumulate sometime prior to the year 1630, when an unknown Dutchman made a drawing of a strange fish that was observed on the coast of Maranhão, northeastern Brazil.

A woodcut was made from this drawing and published in 1633 under the name Pira Vtoewah, forma monstrosa.

Somewhat later, and on the other side of the world, another Dutchman, Captain Willem de Vlamingh, and his crew aboard the frigate Geelvinck were searching for survivors of a shipwreck off the coast of Western Australia. On the morning of December 29, 1696, amid discoveries of rats as big as common house cats (now known to be wallabies) and tracks of tigers and other ferocious beasts (dingoes), there was observed a remarkable fish, “about two feet long, with a round head and a sort of arms and legs and even something like hands.” No doubt this was a frogfish, the earliest published mention of a frogfish from the Indo-Pacific region.

How did your work bring you to study frogfishes?

T.P.: My interest in fishes began a long time ago, when, as a first-year graduate student at the University of Southern California, I was asked by my major professor to take part in shipboard collecting trips off the coast of Southern California. I thought I wanted to study snakes, but, when it came to fishes, I was immediately overwhelmed with the tremendous diversity of forms and their amazing adaptations — I forgot about snakes and never looked back. I became especially interested in fishes that lie-in-wait and attract their prey using luring devices, thus frogfishes became my ideal research animal.

As you note in the introduction, a lot of new information about frogfishes has accumulated since the first publication of this work, in 1987. What are some of the improvements and updates in this greatly revised new edition?

T.P.: Over the past three decades, an enormous amount of new information about frogfishes has accumulated and all of it is addressed in this thoroughly revised edition: new species have been discovered, described, and formally named; geographic distributions have been expanded as marine habitats and ecosystems have been more thoroughly explored; new molecular techniques and greater phylogenetic understanding have resulted in new and sometimes unexpected perspectives on evolutionary relationships; and new insights into feeding, locomotion, and especially reproductive behavior have been observed and recorded through an ever-expanding, worldwide interest in underwater research by students and professional scientists as well as aquarists and recreational divers.

While 30 years ago it was difficult to find high-quality color photographs of frogfishes, state-of-the-art digital camera equipment and talented photographers everywhere have flooded the Internet with a multitude of astonishing images, both stills and videos.

You write that conservation is addressed in this edition — what are the conservation concerns regarding the frogfish?��

T.P.: Thirty years ago, it did not occur to us to include a discussion of conservation, but it appears in this volume. Characterized by low population densities, restricted and patchy geographic distributions, small home ranges, and limited mobility, frogfishes are particularly vulnerable to population declines and risk of extinction due to competition from invasive species, over-collecting by aquarists and the tropical fish trade, climate change (global warming), and habitat degradation. The book looks at efforts to address these threats.

Can you talk a bit about the extensive research that went into this volume?

Work toward completion of this volume has been on-going for decades. The most time-consuming part of it, but perhaps also the most enjoyable, was extensive travel to all the great museum collections around the world that contain preserved specimens of frogfishes.

Just under 5,000 specimens were examined, their structure evaluated, measured, parts counted, and recorded. We also recorded who, when, where and how each specimen was collected. This edition also required an exhaustive review of the published literature over the past 30 years.

Last, but by no means least, were the incredible contributions from museum curators, aquarists, divers, and underwater photographers who generously provided information and photographs. Altogether, some 175 photographers contributed images, more than 7,000 in total, each asking for nothing more than a note of thanks. This volume would be nothing without them.

What is the audience for this book?��

Our intended audience is the scientific community. Ichthyologists and herpetologists, marine ecologists, evolutionary biologists, systematists, behaviorists, biogeographers, conservationists, science historians, commercial tropical fish traders, public and private aquarists, scuba divers, underwater photographers, and natural history enthusiasts in general.

• Watch a video of frogfishes by the Monterey Bay Aquarium:

91̽��Notebook is a section of the 91̽��News site dedicated to telling stories of the good work done by faculty and staff at the 91̽��. Read all posts here.

The first book documenting all of the known species of fishes that live in the Salish Sea is now available.

“” is a three-volume book and is the culmination of more than 40 years of research by authors Theodore W. Pietsch, of the Burke Museum and 91̽�� professor emeritus of , and James W. Orr, a scientist with the and a former graduate student of Pietsch’s and affiliate professor and curator of fishes at the Burke Museum.

The 260 fish species recorded in the book is a new record for the Salish Sea, representing a 20% increase from the last survey about 40 years ago.

In 2015, Pietsch and Orr published an initial report as part of their research for this book, updating the last compilation of Salish Sea fishes from almost four decades ago, which provided brief descriptions, but no illustrations. The��“Fishes of the Salish Sea” is part of current efforts to protect and restore the Salish Sea, an inland waterway shared by Washington and British Columbia, which includes Puget Sound.

“It’s quite astonishing to think that people haven’t really known what’s here in any detail,” Pietsch said. “In preparing this book, we’ve really turned over every stone to make sure we have every fish species ever recorded from our inland marine waters.”

Beginning with jawless hagfishes and lampreys and ending with the distinctive Ocean Sunfish, Pietsch and Orr present the taxa in phylogenetic order, based on classifications that reflect the most current scientific knowledge. Illustrated taxonomic keys featuring striking illustrations by Joseph R. Tomelleri facilitate fast and accurate species identification.

Included in the “Fishes of the Salish Sea” book:

• Comprehensive accounts of 260 fish species
• Brilliant color plates of all species
• Illustrated taxonomic keys for easy species identification
• In-depth history of Salish Sea research and exploration

This comprehensive three-volume set details the ecology and life history of each species, as well as recounts the region’s rich heritage of marine research and exploration.

“Fishes of the Salish Sea” will be useful for scientists, anglers, educators and others in identifying Salish fishes, tracking the distribution and abundance of known species, assessing the health of their habitat and determining when these populations might be in danger of disappearing.

“We’ve provided a baseline of the fishes in the Salish and areas needed for future studies,” Orr said. “The first step in understanding an ecosystem is to identify the elements within it. No matter how closely related, each species has its own life history trajectory ― its development, reproduction and ecology ― that makes its contribution to an ecosystem unique and, if lost, irreplaceable.”

Pietsch and Orr scoured multiple sources to determine whether each species listed in the book lives or was known to live in the Salish Sea region. Their primary source was the vast of the��Burke Museum — which contains more than 12 million specimens — and they looked also at other major fish collections along the West Coast, including those at the University of British Columbia, the Royal British Columbia Museum in Victoria, B.C., and the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco.

Each species described in the book had to have a corresponding specimen or a good-quality photograph to ensure its existence, past or present. The Burke Museum contains archived specimens of nearly all of the 260 species.

The book is available at Seattle-area bookstores and is also available for purchase through the 91̽�� Press��.

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For more information, contact Pietsch at��twp@uw.edu.

To request a review copy of “Fishes of the Salish Sea,” please contact publicity manager M’Bilia Meekers at 206-221-4994 or��mmeekers@uw.edu.

Down deep off the south slope of São Jorge Island in the Azores, west of Portugal in the North Atlantic Ocean, a fearsome-looking fish and her parasitically attached mate drift almost helplessly, salvaging precious energy in their dark, food-scarce environment.

The pair, a species never before seen alive by humans, was recorded recently on camera by researchers Kirsten and Joachim Jakobsen aboard the , a submersible operated by the marine science-focused .

For some 25 minutes, the female — a kind of anglerfish known as the Fanfin Seadevil — was observed to float slowly and gracefully, rolling in the current, head down and head up, through the pitch-black water at a depth of about 800 meters (2,600 feet). She swept her long whisker-like fin-rays back and forth, with pinpoints of light emanating at intervals along the length of each ray — the soft, spine-like structure that supports the fins. Hard to see at first glance was a tiny male, hanging from her belly.

It is a mesmerizing scene for the average viewer, but for , a 91̽�� professor emeritus of aquatic and fishery sciences and curator emeritus of fishes at the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, the video footage is downright amazing.

“This is a unique and never-before-seen thing,” said Pietsch, who is the world’s expert on anglerfishes, having described and named more than 70 new species. “It’s so wonderful to have a clear window on something only imagined before this.”

Deep-sea anglerfishes, including the Fanfin Seadevil, scientifically known as Caulophryne jordani, are found in all oceans around the world, yet the roughly 160 known species are extremely rare. For example, only 14 females of the anglerfish in this video exist in jars of alcohol in natural history collections around the world. Males of the same species have never before been observed. Despite substantial growth in recent years of deep-water exploration, the foundation’s spectacular video observations mark only the third time anglerfish behavior has ever been recorded in deep water, Pietsch said.

Deep-sea anglerfishes lure their prey in the inky-black ocean darkness at depths between 300 and 5,000 meters (980 and 16,400 feet) using a bioluminescent fishing apparatus placed on the tip of the snout — hence the “angler” in their common name. Their enormous, toothy mouth and expandable stomach enable them to capture and devour prey larger than themselves in a single instantaneous gulp.

Deep-sea anglerfish males are a fraction of the size of the females — in the most extreme cases, females may be more than 60 times the length and about a half-a-million times as heavy as the males. The males don’t have a luring apparatus; instead, most have large, well-developed eyes and huge nostrils, which help them home in on a species-specific chemical attractant emitted by the females.

Once a male finds a female, a seemingly impossible task in the vast open space of the deep sea, he bites onto her body, the tissues and circulatory systems of the two fuse, and he is fed by nutrients received through her blood. The male becomes a “sexual parasite,” hanging on for the rest of his life and unable to free himself, fertilizing the eggs produced by the female. The male completely loses his individuality and the couple becomes a single functioning organism.

Video footage of this kind allows us to see these animals behaving in the wild, something otherwise impossible, Pietsch said. Like most deep-dwelling organisms, anglerfishes can’t live under laboratory conditions. Most are already dead by the time they are brought to the ocean’s surface, not only because of the pressure change, but also the great increase in temperature compared to their deep-water environment.

“I have spent hundreds of hours staring into deep waters, but this is one of the most amazing video footage I have seen to date. It brilliantly shows the otherness of deep-sea life, and how important it is to observe these animals in their own realm, to understand their behavior and adaptation,” said Antje Boetius, a biological oceanographer at the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany, who recently completed her 49th deep-sea expedition.

The Jakobsen video also shows body structures and behaviors never before recorded for any fish.

For example, almost all fish fin-rays are connected by membranes that cause the fin to move as a single unit, but those of the Fanfin Seadevil move independently — each is equipped with its own set of muscles that control movement and a nerve that runs the full length.

“One can’t help but think these fin-rays form a network of sensory antennae, a kind of sphere of tactility around the fish — akin to cat whiskers — that functions to monitor the close presence of predators or prey,” Pietsch said.

And what about those pinpoints of light, scattered along the length of the fin-rays, also something never seen before in any fish? They are most likely the result of bioluminescence.

Pietsch speculates that this “light-show” may have a number of different functions. It may attract prey, or alternatively give predators the impression of a much larger organism, too formidable to attack and too big to swallow. Or maybe the fish is mimicking a jellyfish, with its stinging tentacles, and further avoiding being eaten.

Observations like this video by the Rebikoff-Niggeler Foundation are the only way scientists can better understand how deep-sea animals live and interact with other organisms around them.

“Collections matter for survey of occurrences, biogeography, species description, and morphology,” said Peter Bartsch, curator of the fish collection at the Museum of Natural Sciences in Berlin. “But, whenever possible, these must be supplemented by direct observations for understanding biology, to test hypotheses of functions, potential biological roles of organ systems and ecology of the species.”

The Rebikoff-Niggeler Foundation is a non-profit organization for marine science with the purpose of fostering research and documentation of deep-sea environments. One of the foundation’s primary goals is to observe deep-water animals in their natural environment using manned submersibles.

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For more information on anglerfishes, contact Pietsch at twp@uw.edu. Contact the Rebikoff-Niggeler Foundation at info@rebikoff.org or +351 919858539 (Portugal).

More information on the foundation’s diving expeditions:

More than three centuries ago, a French monk made thousands of drawings of plants and animals, traveling under the authority of King Louis XIV to the French Antilles to collect and document the natural history of the islands. These drawings were often the first ever recorded for each species and were completed in remarkable detail.

The illustrations were nearly lost forever during the tumultuous French Revolution, and the volumes compiled by were discovered by chance, found serving as stools for the monks to sit on by the fire in the convent where he lived.

The illustrations are now safely held in a national library in France, but they have never been published as Plumier intended. , a 91̽�� professor emeritus of aquatic and fishery sciences, and curator emeritus of fishes at the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, has published the first of several volumes showcasing the work of the French naturalist. After many trips to France and a bit of investigative work, Pietsch has compiled Plumier’s fish drawings in a book, “.”

Hover above each photo to see the caption and click on each one to see the full drawing.

How did you get the idea for a book about Charles Plumier?

TP: Charles Plumier made drawings of hundreds of fishes from the Caribbean, the coast of France and the Mediterranean. As an ichthyologist (one who studies fishes), I thought I should look at these drawings, and this entire project got started from there.

You say in your introduction, “Never was a man so denied a place in history than Father Charles Plumier.” What do you mean by this?

TP: The poor fellow died too young – he was only 58. He put scientific names on hundreds and hundreds of plants, fishes and other animals, but because they were pre-Linnaean – or named before the Latinized nomenclature for species was established – none of Plumier’s species names were recognized as valid. After he died in 1704 he was largely forgotten, and the only thing that saved him was the survival of his manuscripts.

Can you characterize the volume and quality of Plumier’s work, compared with other naturalists?

TP: The number of manuscripts is vast and the quality is far superior, compared with the majority of naturalists of his day. His 39 bound volumes include nearly 6,000 separate figures, of which about 4,300 depict plants, and the remaining drawings are devoted to animals. Four volumes are devoted to fishes; one constituting the master set is reproduced in this book.

How did Plumier get his start?

TP: He started out as an illustrator. His father taught him how to use the lath and work with instruments like clocks. He got into engraving, and then early on joined a monastery and became a monk. There, people began to recognize his talent, and Plumier went on collecting trips in France with famous naturalists, like the great French botanist Joseph Pitton de Tournefort. Finally, someone recommended him to the king, who sent him to the Caribbean. Plumier traveled to the New World three times to document the flora and fauna. When he returned he was given a pension and the title “Botanist du Roi”; for the first time, he became somewhat famous. He had elaborate plans to publish his work on fishes, but died before it came to be.

Talk about his illustration technique. Do any drawings stand out as exceptional to you?

TP: With his drawings, he not only sketched the whole fish in front of him, but he also dissected and drew the bones. He was one of the very first naturalists to study the skeleton of fishes, and he made illustrations of all sorts of internal structures, including the muscles and guts as well as the bones, all details that very few people cared about at the time. In many of his drawings, Plumier labeled the various body parts with numbers and a color key listed on the side of the sketch. This allowed him to make a final finished rendering intended for later publication. When we compare his drawings today to the animals themselves, it’s amazing how accurate the drawings are.

How did you complete the research for this book? Did it take you down any interesting roads?

TP: What a privilege it was to sit in the library of the natural history museum in Paris () and study Plumier’s manuscripts. I’ve been visiting that library for many years – my first visit was 40 years ago. I spent time poring over manuscripts, making sure all of his fish drawings were covered in my book. Once I was able to make a list of the drawings, the library was very kind and digitized everything so I could work from home in Seattle to identify the various species. I sent my identification notes to my ichthyological colleagues, so the work was proofed and checked many times.

Describe the manuscript. How did you arrange it, and how do you tell the story of Plumier and his work?

TP: One of Plumier’s volumes contains numbered drawings of all the different kinds of fishes he encountered, and we suspect he was preparing that manuscript for publication before he died. We arranged the book exactly how he left his manuscript. The big piece of work for me was identifying all of the different species. The names he gave to plants and animals were lengthy Latin polynomials that described color and shape, so I had to identify everything and put currently recognized Latinized names to each. From start to finish, it took about 10 years.

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For more information, contact Pietsch at twp@uw.edu.

Coho salmon, Pacific halibut and even the dogfish shark are familiar faces to many people in the Salish Sea region. But what about the Pacific viperfish, northern flashlightfish, dwarf wrymouth or the longsnout prickleback?

These colorfully named species and others are compiled in a new, 106-page that documents all of the fishes that live in the Salish Sea, a roughly 6,500-square-mile region that encompasses Puget Sound, the Strait of Juan de Fuca, the Strait of Georgia, the San Juan Islands and the Canadian Gulf Islands.

In total, 253 fish species have been recorded in the Salish Sea, and that’s about 14 percent more than in the last count, said , co-author of the new report and a 91̽�� emeritus professor of aquatic and fishery sciences.

Previous surveys never fully captured the total number of fish species, though Salish Sea bird and mammal species are documented in full.

“It’s quite astonishing to think that people haven’t really known what’s here in any detail,” Pietsch said. “In preparing this report, we’ve really turned over every stone to make sure we have every fish species ever recorded from our inland marine waters.”

The paper’s other author is Jay Orr, a scientist with the Alaska Fisheries Science Center and a former graduate student of Pietsch’s. Their exhaustive report represents the first thorough survey and analysis of Salish Sea fishes in 35 years.

“,” published online Tuesday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, includes a full taxonomic list as well as an analysis of geographic distribution and relative local abundance, along with common and scientific names and key references to learn more about each species. Some of the fishes are depicted in hand-drawn images by artist , so accurate and life-like that they are easily mistaken for photographs.

The report is a precursor to a book coming out in a year or two that will feature Tomelleri’s drawings of all 253 Salish Sea fish species.

This report and the eventual book will be useful for scientists, anglers, educators and others in identifying Salish fishes, tracking the distribution and abundance of known species, assessing the health of their habitat and determining when these populations might be in danger of disappearing.

“If you don’t first know what you have, it’s impossible to know what you might be losing,” Pietsch said.

Pietsch and Orr scoured multiple sources to determine whether each species listed in the report lives or was known to live in the Salish Sea region, also known as the inland marine waters of Washington and British Columbia. Their primary source was the vast fish collection of the — which now contains more than 11 million specimens — and they looked also at other major fish collections along the West Coast, including those at the University of British Columbia, the Royal British Columbia Museum in Victoria, B.C., and the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco.

Each species described in the report had to have a corresponding specimen or a good-quality photograph to ensure its existence, past or present. The Burke Museum contains archived specimens of nearly all of the 253 species.

Some of the newly added species include the prickly sculpin, Bering eelpout, spotted cusk-eel and the halfbanded rockfish. Including them in the full report means these species were seen and documented in the region sometime in the past, but weren’t represented on the last survey list, which was published in 1980.

In total, 37 new species were added, and five species were removed from the list because researchers couldn’t find evidence of their presence in the Salish Sea.

The online publication and upcoming book capture knowledge gained from Pietsch’s 37 years of teaching and archiving specimens at the UW. The professor and curator of fishes at the Burke Museum retired this past summer.

Funding for the work came from the , a marine science conservation program of the Karen C. Drayer Wildlife Health Center, a center of excellence at the University of California Davis School of Veterinary Medicine.

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For more information, contact Pietsch at twp@uw.edu or 206-543-8923.

After nearly 35 years, a color-changing fish known for its red “fingers” finally has a proper name.

91̽�� scientists recently announced the name of a new genus and species of frogfish, which are small, stocky creatures found in most tropical and subtropical oceans around the world. The fish was first seen and collected in Australia in 1980 by a 91̽��graduate student, but the sole specimen disappeared soon after, leaving researchers no option but to shelve the discovery.

Recently, another 91̽��graduate student, , and fisheries professor again located the elusive fish in Australia’s Botany Bay near Sydney and helped collect new specimens – one of the requirements for naming a new species.

After sequencing its DNA, they realized they had in fact discovered a new genus and species.

“To find something on the genus level, a step above species, is pretty spectacular,” said Pietsch, a 91̽��professor of aquatic and fishery sciences and curator of fishes at the . “People have been diving and collecting in that location for hundreds of years and publishing vigorously for 100 years or more, and we find something now no one else has seen.”

Now, Porophryne erythrodactylus – or Red-fingered anglerfish – has been added to the exhaustive maintained by the California Academy of Sciences and had housed in . It even has its own .

Arnold, who graduated with a doctoral degree last spring, is the lead author of a recent in the journal describing the discovery.

After the first specimen disappeared in the 1980s, divers again saw the fish in 2005, and the 91̽��scientists worked with an Australian museum to collect three specimens. The fish had two different color patterns, leading scientists to believe there were two different species under the new genus. But after Arnold sequenced DNA from each, she realized they were the same species that have the capability to change from a grayish color to one that varies from reddish-pink to orange for camouflage.

“We don’t have a good idea of how many there are, but their population is very small,” she said. “We do know they have a very limited geographic range and are sensitive to habitat loss.”

The new species has a distinct red coloration on the tips of its pectoral fins. Its dorsal fins have a unique shape, allowing the fish to dart quickly over rocks. Other frogfish instead amble or “walk” across the seafloor.

Some divers have observed the fish moving its red-tipped fins, almost like it’s waving its brightly colored fingers to catch the attention and curiosity of potential prey, Pietsch said, though that connection is merely anecdotal.

While this particular fish has only been seen off the coast of Sydney, frogfish are found worldwide, including U.S. shores along the Atlantic coast, Hawaii and as far north as Los Angeles. Most species are thriving, and their strategy is to blend into reefs and bottom rocks using their spiny, textured outer skin for camouflage.

They hardly move – and rarely swim – but when they do, they clamber across the sea bottom using their fins as “feet.” They wait for crustaceans and other fish, even frogfish, to approach. Then in a split second, they open and enlarge their mouths up to 12 times the original size, sucking in the prey whole. This can all happen in as little as 6 milliseconds.

A special muscle in the esophagus keeps the swallowed prey from escaping, and the frogfish can also expand its stomach to digest its hearty meal.

“They are so odd-looking and yet so photogenic,” Arnold said with a laugh.

So far nothing is planned for the Red-fingered anglerfish in terms of population counts or conservation activities, Arnold said, though its home in Sydney’s Botany Bay is full of industry and has water quality issues. She hopes this species is included in any future studies because it’s a native fish not found elsewhere.

The paper’s other co-author is Rob Harcourt of Macquarie University in Sydney. The work was funded by the Dorothy T. Gilbert Ichthyology Research Fund through the UW’s School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences.

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For more information, contact Arnold at frogfishes@gmail.com or 206-851-9377 and Pietsch at twp@uw.edu or 206-543-8923.