How To Be A Mermaid/Marine Biologist
Q is for Quinque
Scientific Name: Quinquelineatus
Common Name: Five-lined snapper
Tagalog: Maya maya
A lot can be found in a name.
This is a school of Five Lined Snapper aka Lutjanus quinqueliniatus
We enjoy swimming and eating together over the coral reef.
Quinque means five.
Qunique is an important part of our scientific name.
It describes who we are and what we look like.
We have five of something, can you figure out what?
Hint: it’s long and blue.
P is for Purple Parrotfish Poop
Scientific Name: Scarus niger
Palawan: Mol Mol, Tagalog: Loro Loro
These Parrotfish are one of many contributors to the beautiful tropical white sand beaches in The Coral Triangle. They are particularly fond of eating the algae film that grows on coral. They chomp into the coral with their beak (actually fused teeth) to get a mouthful of both coral and algae. The crushed coral helps the fish digest the algae and is then pooped out in the form of particularly perfect, soft, white sand. Next time you are relaxing on your tropical vacation, remember to thank the parrotfish.
Side Note: These particularly pretty purple parrotfish look most like the male Swarthy Parrotfish – Scarus niger. The ones observed here have slightly different spot patterns behind the eyes but it could be a local variation or due to a shift between initial and terminal phases. This is the way I saw them so this is the way I paint them. There is also that glorious possibility that they are a new species, sigh, the scientific holy grail.
pen ketch of Female (above) and Male (below)
O is for Octopus
Scientific name: Amphioctopus marginatus
Tagalog: Pugita
The Coconut Octopus of The Coral Triangle is a multi-talented mollusk. He can change color to tell you how he’s feeling, solve puzzles, catch fish, blow ink, swim, crawl, explore, befriend mermaids
AND, most impressively, he joins the elite group of species on planet earth who use tools. His favorites include coconuts and clam shells and uses them for protection. Like the nudibranch, he is a soft and squishy little guy who feels exposed and naked when walking across the ocean floor. A clam shell acts like an army helmet or bunker, making a safe place to hide when a hungry sea monster attacks.
Video: http://bcove.me/u67wa3sj
N is for Nematocyst Nipping Nudibranchs
Scientifice name: Chromodoris elizabethina (left) & Chromodoris annulata
Tagalog: Dugo Dugo
“Nudis” are a brightly beautiful group of sea snails without shells. When you are a tiny, squishy sea creature with out a shell, you can feel a little nude and unprotected. Anemones don’t have shells either but they do have stingers. Nudis have a special way to collect anemone stingers (aka nematocyts).
First they go up to the anemone and touch it to make sure it is really an anemone. Then they retreat back to a safe distance. Next, they charge back to the anemone and start munching on the dangerous tentacles, they swallow the stingers and absorb their power. Soon the little Nudi is able to sting like an anemone. This is why Nudibranchs eat the poisonous stingers off of anemone tentacles. Stingers are not just delicious treat for these brilliant little sea slugs.
M is for Mola Mola
Scientific Name: Mola mola
The Mola Mola is also known as The Sunfish because she likes to bask in the sun. She dives into the cold dark depths of the ocean to fill up her belly with jellyfish. When the cool deep waters chill her bones, she swims all the way back up, up, up to the surface, lies on her side and soaks up the warm sun rays. Sometimes a sea bird will drop down and pick off all the little hitchhiking bugs on her tail. Because they are so slow and docile, they are the most highly parasitized fish in the ocean (Disgustingly long tape worms are a common hitchhiker).
The little orange fish on the left is a baby picture, from when she was a teeny tiny microscopic mola mola floating in the plankton as she grew and grew. Molas are the largest teleosts and grow from 10 microns to over 10 feet wide.
L is for Lobster
Scientific Name: Panulirus ornatus
Tagalog: Panga
Lobsters in the tropics are a lovely combination of bright colors. They have sharp tail spines for protection against those that hope for a tasty lobster dinner. Tropical lobsters in The Coral Triangle are different from their American East Coast brethren in another way too, they do not have claws.
Wherever they hail from, all lady lobsters have wider tails so that when they become lobster mamas they have a place to carry their brood. They mature under the big strong tail, leaf shaped pleopods and sharp tail spines.
Most fisherman consider it good practice to throw lady lobsters or “eggers” back in the water so that they will make more and more lobsters to catch in years to come.
K is for Krill
Scientific name: Euphausia fallax
Tagalog: Alamang
A Krill is different than a shrimp and different than a prawn.
Krill are Krill.
They are open ocean travelers and the size of a jellybean
They munch of delicious green diatoms.
Their sheer numbers are a super force that
create a floating cloud with the power to turn the immense blue ocean a radical shade of pink.
Everyone in the sea depends on these tiny pink crustaceans to keep things running smoothly.
The power of one pales with the power of a billion trillions!
J is for Jellyfish loving Juvenile Jack
Scientific name: Gnathanodon speciosus
Tagalog: Leson & Labong Labong
Juvenile Jacks love Giant Jellyfish.
They have tough skin so the jellyfish tentacles only sting a little bit.
Having jellyfish protection when a big fish wants to eat you is worth a little sting.
This bright yellow jack is also known as Golden Trevally and like most trevally, they get HUGE.
Jacks are truly a « Jack of all trades ». Jacks patrol their reef, but they can also compete in the open ocean or expore sandy shallows or swim around the mangroves.
They are large and in charge predators and even boss around the reef sharks.
At least they are once they grow up, and to do that they have to survive with tricks like swimming with jellyfish.
I is for Ichthyologist
ICK-THEEE-O-LOW-GEST – Ichthyologist!
This is a name for a person often found in the water. They are scientists who study fish, count fish, dream about fish and collect data to unlock the secret lives of fishes.
Ocean enthusiastic kids have inquired on how to become a mermaid. The answer lies in the theme of this book and my response back to these mermaid scientist “sea fans” focuses on the importance of gaining knowledge about the ocean and all its fishes, and that creating this deeper understanding between yourself and the ocean is the crux of becoming a mermaid. The study of Ichthyology is an age old mermaid tradition.
To all aspiring Mermaids aka Ichthyologists I say: Learn! Read! Enjoy! and before long, you will understand what it is to be half fish.
Side note: The Father of Ichthyology was a swedish naturalist Peter Artedi, who mysteriously disappeared in the waters of Amsterdam. This epitaph was written in latin by Anders Celsius, translated by George Shaw and quoted in Linnaeus’s publication of the Ichthyologia: Here lies poor Artedi, in foreign land pyx’d
Not a man nor a fish, but something betwixt,
Not a man, for his life among fishes he past,
Not a fish, for he perished by water at last.
H is for Hammerheaded Hammerhead Head Shark
Tagalog: Crosan
Scientific Name: Sphyrna lewini
This shark has a humungous hammer shaped head.
A Hammerhead can find his favorite foods hidden under the sand, like the stingray.
His head has pores filled with electric jelly that can sense other animals even when they are hidden.
You can also call these jelly pores “electroreceptors” or “galvanic cells”
The bigger the head, the more pores and therefore it’s easier for this shark to detect electric impulses from other sea creatures.
Finding invisible things is this sharks special power so playing hide and seek with him is not recommended.
The Coral Grouper
Tagalog: Lapu Lapu
Scientific name: Cephalopholis miniata
The Grouper is a cruiser.
Her job is to patrol, ponder and protect her piece of reef from other big predators. Her flashy colors won’t betray her. The deeper she patrols away from the sunlight, the more her brilliant red fades away, blending her into this homey reef background until she is almost invisible. This is perfect for sneaking up on intruders or surprising tasty unsuspecting morsels.
F is for Flying Fish Fins
Tagalog: Isdang lawin
Scientific name: Cheilopogon arcticeps
Flying fish pectoral fins make fantastic wings. With these fins, one can jump out of the water to enjoy the thrill of flying on the salty sea air. The use of these fins is a fast way to elude feisty flying fish loving predators. There is nothing more satisfying for a full fledged flying fish than keeping pace with the flying fish school and frolicking on ocean currents of both air and water. There are few fishes in the ocean that have the fins to enjoy this type of freedom.
Garrison Keeler just read this poem and, trees aside, it felt like flying fish to me:
Treetops are not so high
Nor I so low
That I don’t instinctively know
How it would be to fly
Through gaps that the wind makes, when
The leaves arouse
And there is a lifting of boughs
That settle and lift again.
Whatever my kind may be,
It is not absurd
To confuse myself with a bird
For the space of a reverie:
My species never flew,
But I somehow know
It is something that long ago
I almost adapted to.
“Flying” by Richard Wilbur, from Anterooms. © Houghton Mifflin, 2010.
E is for Elongate Eel
Tagalog: Indong
Scientific Name: Gymnothorax isingteena
aka The Spotted Moray
This eel is an eeeelongate fish, his long body is ideally suited to squeeze through small holes in the reef and chase small fishes for dinner.
An interesting hunting partnership developed between Moray eels and Groupers. The Grouper sees where a school of fish have hidden themselves from him in the coral reef, because he is too big to go into these small holes he goes off to find his friend the eel. This eel is a bit nearsighted so the grouper floats right in front of his face and shakes his head back and forth, back and forth. this is their secret code for: “I know where there are some tasty small fish, follow me”. The eel follows the grouper to the place in the reef where the small fish are hiding. He wriggles in and chases them out for the grouper to catch and hopefully manages to catch a few for himself along the way.
When a clownfish and an anemone meet….
A Mermaid Scientist Film made by The Mermaid Islands Corporation
Mermaid Scientist 