How To Be A Mermaid/Marine Biologist
Looking throughout old sketchbooks of rockfish and found these from my NOAA/NMFS days as a Research Fisheries Biologist. Fun, fun, fun…. contemplating Quillback Stock Assessment. oh the memories of analyzing all the West Coast spatially enabled trawl data for groundfishes, making conclusions about Rockfish Conservation Areas and other such mer-things.
Quillback Stock Assessment
Flag Rockfish
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.
Mermaid Scientist 