#blue doctorfish

[fishyfishyfishtimes]

Daily fish fact #277

Atlantic blue tang!

This fish glows green under blue or ultraviolet light! They're herbivores and typically eat algae and plankton, even serving as cleaners by eating it off of other fish.

[sharelldenae]

Have you ever heard of a Blue Tang?

If you have ever watched the movie Nemo, you may recognize this fish. True blue tangs are restricted to coral reefs in the Caribbean Sea and surrounding waters and are often confused with two other surgeonfishes that inhabit the same waters, the doctorfish and ocean surgeonfish, as all three species look similar. Blue tangs are herbivores, and they actively browse the surface of coral reefs, searching for their favorite algae. Though larger individuals sometimes browse by themselves or in pairs or threesomes, small to medium adults often form large groups and swim long distances, browsing along the reef surface throughout the day. With overfishing of their main predators (e.g., large groupers and snappers) and a reduction of some of their main competitors for algae (e.g., the Longspine Urchin), numbers of adult blue tangs can be quite high on many reefs. Juveniles live among dead coral rubble or in mangrove forests in more protected waters and move to the open reef surface as they mature. Adult blue tangs are solid blue (or almost dark purple), while juveniles are solid yellow.

[just-a-sad-science-clown]

{Image 1} Rounded Cadual Fin can be found on the, flounder, sculpin, blue face angel 

{Image 2} Forked Cadual Fin can be found on the yellowfin doctorfish, herring, goatfish

{Image 3} Lunate Cadual Fin can be found on the Marlin, Tuna and other fast moving fish 

{Image 4} Truncate Cadual Fin can be found on the grey angelfish, bass, salmon

{Image 5} Heterocercal Cadual Fins are found on sharks of many kinds, reef sharks, thresher sharks, lemon sharks, whale sharks

[aiweirdness]

The neural network meets its match: Fish biologists

(Drawing by Max Graenitz)

I train machine learning programs called neural networks - they work by looking at lists of data and then deducing their own rules about how to generate similar data. They’re used in everything from ad targeting to facial recognition to self-driving cars, but I use them for humor by giving them very silly datasets.

Usually in my experiment, I give the neural network an unfair dataset - like paint colors - and it tries its best, but ends up with something unintentionally weird, like a brownish color called Stanky Bean, or a bright blue color called Dad.

Fish biologist Colin Gross sent me a new dataset for the neural network, a list of the common names of 37,265 fish from fishbase.

I gave the list to an open-source neural network and let it start trying to generate more fish.

Here’s a snapshot of its early attempts, as it tried to spell common words like “butterflyfish” and “shark” and “snapper”

Blue-spotted erlerfish Seer batterfly Seelet guby Pit-hard fish Seate shurper Seelee murchlip Segfish Seare moatherfish Seale multerflyfish Seeled cudfish Seored barshont Seare sputterfish Spotfin spunterfly Spotfin sul shripper Sponted stripper Spotfin shurk Spotfin snarper Blue-spotted mrinnfish

But then, it got good at this. I mean, really really good at this. You may think these names are the neural network being weird? No. They are pretty much indistinguishable from actual fish common names because, let me tell you, fish biologists are the weird ones. 

The rest of this post is going to be the neural network’s ode to its new best friends, the fish biologists. And, I am very lucky to have excellent drawings by the talented Max Graenitz who wanted to get in on the weird-fest.

Black Sea sweetlips Eastern Dear eel Oastern nose sucker Vermillion assfin Cuban fork head sucker Gempofloise sand flaky Vumberfish Gerpike dwarf monocle bream Wrink clown-shark Bluebanded smooth-eet Bluebacked tube-spot skate Wallare pipe-eyed parrotfish Moon-lined wad Kascopcan tonguefish Highfin stonebasher

Dantuman ghost puffer Moo lanternfish Darfer butterflyfish Hornmack croaker Horny deepwater darter Horseshark Orangespotted smooth-hound Yellow-black yellowtail dragonet Small-dotted catshark Small-mouthed unicorn fish Orangespotted tilefish Horse-eye grunt Horse-snout fang-tailed dogfish Pacific squeaker Pacific headless lamprey Little weakfish

Mottonsfish Danubiec spring-striped lumpsucker Kaire-fin eartheater Sputtail Vague-lined sleeper-banded soapfish Dangle shark Daui's deepwater redhorse Khan's hound shark Rathead batfish Lanto sand tiger unicorn fish Bockon cubehead Bow spiny lumpsucker Boster weedfish Deep dogfish Binder's flathead parrotfish Hawaiian Stump ray Black Sea gardenfish Black Sea jobfish Horny humbug

Short-nose batfish Short-nosed leatherjacket Short-nosed jewelled-eyed rainbowfish Short-lined pigfish Short-toothed trumpeter Short-face shrampgoby Short-headed hogfish Bokinker's tubeshoulder Bottlenose wobbegong Bostriebann flute-tooth wolffish Boguu dragonet Pighead mullet

Moanygoby Mottled utterfish Kack's coral gropes Kalhal gardensean block ray Wurp fish Whitley assfish Sudderspot happy ghost-perch Sucking puller Sunsetnose spider shark Witcheefin squirrelfish Orangeside slickhead Hawaiian doctorfish Chornacher comb-tooth Black Sea lampeye Striped flying fang loach Striped hone-spine dottyback Greater butterfly tube-snouted ghost knifefish Cuban armoured cat

I’ve posted the original dataset so you can see I am NOT KIDDING about how weird fish names are.

Want to help with neural network experiments? For NaNoWriMo I’m crowdsourcing a dataset of novel first lines, after the neural network had trouble with a too-small dataset.

Go to this form (no email necessary) and enter the first line of your novel, or your favorite novel, or of every novel on your bookshelf. You can enter as many as you like. At the end of the month, I’ll hopefully have enough sentences to give this another try.

[sharksketchbook]

MerMay day 7! The colors for these two were inspired by the yellowfin tuna and the blue tang. I used tuna because sharks eat a lot of it - that’s how this mermaid lost her arm (the sea is a dangerous place!). I went with the blue tang because I liked the colors, then read that tangs are also called blue doctorfish and do a lot of cleaning and tending to other undersea creatures… which lent a sweet bonus to their relationship. This is my second mercouple for the month - trying to mix it up and have the same amount of MF, MM and FF pairings represented.

[lifeunderthewaves]

Interloper in the crowd by mjmcvicar A trumpetfish hides among a mixed school of Blue Tangs and Doctorfish, hunting under cover of the school.

[matthewrader]

Photos: Beautiful Tropical Fish in Curaçao

Sergeant Major in Curacao

While in Curaçao I went snorkeling several times. The tropical fish and reefs there were incredible. I was able to get some awesome photos of beautiful tropical fish underwater by bringing an underwater case for my camera.

Doctorfish in Curacao

Atlantic Blue Tang fish in Curacao

Doctorfish in Curacao

Stoplight Parrotfish in Curacao

Banded Butterflyfish…

[fishihavecaught]

2014 - Year In Review

As an experiment this year, I decided to keep track of every fish caught by day and location. I have compiled and crunched the numbers are here are the results.

530 total fish 

73 different species 

44 new species 

57 saltwater species

16 freshwater species

Month with most fish - March (104)

Month with least fish - June & September (5)

Fished 21 different locations

Caught fish on 66 different days

Total days fishing - somewhere around 70

Fished off personal boat -- 1

Fished off pier -- 8

Fished off party boats -- 2

Fished off private Charter -- 1

Highlights

Following are some of my favorite moments from the year, not necessarily in any order.

1 - Party boat trip on the Super Queen!

We caught a bunch of White Grunt and Black Sea Bass

2. Had a good year catching some nice sized Largemouth Bass.

3, Broke my gar drought by catching 5 Florida Gar this year

4. First Hogfish!

5. My Smooth Trunkfish and Spotted Trunkfish.

6. My first shark and also coincidentally my 100th species!

7. My second species of Searobin

8. All the cool exotic freshwater species caught this year

9. Finally catching a Bowfin after losing so many

Overall it was a great year in fishing and I realized my goal of reaching 100 species for the year. I can't wait for next year and what adventures it will bring.

Species Count

Atlantic Bumper 1 Atlantic Cod 1 Atlantic Mackerel 10 Bandtail Puffer 4 Bermuda Chub 10 Big Head Searobin 1 Black Acara 5 Black Crappie 1 Black Grouper 1 Black Sea Bass 4 Blue Runner 7 Blue Striped Grunt 12 Bluegill 125 Bowfin 1 Brown Bullhead 7 Doctorfish 2 Dog Snapper 2 Dusky Damsel 2 Eastern Mosquitofish 3 Florida Gar 5 French Grunt 74 Gag Grouper 1 Golden Shiner 3 Golden Top Minnow 7 Grass Porgy 1 Grey Gurnard 1 Gulf Killifish 3 Hogfish 1 Horse-eye Jack 1 Houndfish 1 Jack Crevalle 4 Lane Snapper 4 Largemouth Bass 9 Little Head Porgy 1 Longfin Damsel 1 Mahogany Snapper 1 Mangrove Snapper 9 Mayan Cichlid 2 Midas Cichlid 3 Oscar 1 Pigfish 16 Pinfish 44 Polluck 4 Porkfish 3 Puddingwife 12 Red Drum 1 Redband Parrotfish 1 Redear Sunfish 16 Redtail Parrotfish 2 Sailors Choice 4 Sand Perch 3 Sand Seatrout 4 Scaled Sardine 2 Schoolmaster 1 Scrawled Cowfish 1 Scrawled Filefish 1 Sheepshead 1 Silky Shark 1 Slippery Dick 9 Smallmouth Grunt 4 Smooth Trunkfish 1 Southern Puffer 3 Spanish Mackerel 1 Spot Tail Pinfish 20 Spotted Sunfish 1 Spotted Tilapia 1 Spotted Trunkfish 1 Threadfin Herring 1 Tomtate 1 Vermilion Snapper 2 White Grunt 29 Yellow Sea Chub 2 Yellowtail Snapper 5   530

[dbamountaineer]

Warning!!!

This post describes experience while visiting Georgia Aquarium last November 2015. What I saw at that time may probably different right now as the aquarium went to renovations and improvements for the past two years.

Since it was my last day in Atlanta as the next day was my return flight to my country, I felt like I have to see more as much as I can while I was still in the city. After an hour of leisure walk at Peachtree Street NE, I turned right at Baker Street towards Pemberton Place where Georgia Aquarium is located.

When I visited World of Coca-Cola, I bought Atlanta City Pass which is a bundle tickets for the most popular tourist places to see in Downtown Atlanta and that includes the aquarium, therefore I already have ticket for the Largest Aquarium in Western Hemisphere which is Georgia Aquarium.

Walking at Baker St NW towards Georgia Aquarium

Georgia Aquarium at Pemberton Place

It’s past 6:00 PM in Friday evening and I just have around two hours left before Georgia Aquarium will close that day and Friday is the only day in a week that it close late at 8PM, and because of that I was a bit lucky to still have time to sneak around the place.

Because I came two hours before it close, most of the shows inside the aquarium were over, so typically I haven’t seen any shows anymore and all I can do was see what was available for me at that time. But when I walked inside the aquarium I still felt amazed in the surroundings and overwhelm how huge it was.

I will described here the following things and marine species that I saw while wandering inside the former World’s Largest Aquarium.

Cafe Aquaria

While inside the Georgia Aquarium before I get inside of one of the gallery, the first thing to notice was the cafeteria. Cafe Aquaria is located almost at the center of the aquarium. So wherever you are, whether you are in the first or second level, the cafeteria is still visible.

River Scout

The first area that I explored inside Georgia Aquarium was River Scout which according to my brochure it is a place where I will discover the wide diversity of animals found in the rivers and lakes of Africa, South America, Asia and the state of Georgia.

Amazon Exotics

The species exhibited here are came from Amazon River – world’s second’s largest river. As per experience, I saw colourful fishes in this part of River Scout.

Blue Discus

African Cichlids

Lake Tanganyika and Lemon Cichlids

Overhead River

Longnose Gar

Trouts

Fishes of New Guinea

Neon Dwarf Rainbowfish

Southeast Asian Fishes

Harlequin Rasbora

Emerald-eye Rasbora

Archer Fish

Spotted  Scat and Banded Archerfish

Banded Archer Fish

Silver Moony

Green striped hermit carb

Freshwater Turtles

River Cooter

Yellow Belly Slider

American Alligator

Piranha

Red Piranha

Red-bellied Piranha

Leaving River Scout

Dolphin Celebration (Dolphin Tales)

Just beside River Scout, there is escalator that goes to Dolphin Celebration area. Since no more shows available, I just took my chance to see the Dolphins at the lobby area where they were playing and swimming.

Common Bottlenose Dolphin

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I saw Dolphins couple of times in different places that I had been with, but their charm towards me are still there. I still stop for a moment just to watch them after I took some photos of them.

Cold Water Quest

The area which just next to Dolphin Tales gallery is Cold Water Quest where the focus of the exhibits are species that lives in waters with cold temperatures and found all over the world.

Beluga Whales

Sea Otters

African Penguins

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Big-bellied Seahorse

Weedy Sea Dragons

Rock Fish and Sea Star

Spotted Ratfish

Giant Plumose Anemone and Japanese Spider Crab

Sea Star, Sea Urchins, and Sea Anemones

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Ocean Voyager 

After enjoying the animals in Cold Water Quest, I went to Ocean Voyager where the former World’s Largest Aquarium until 2012 can be found. I do honestly enjoy such kind of aquarium that allows people to virtually walked underneath of it. It is said that this is the only Aquarium in North America to house whale sharks.

Giant Guitarfish and Giant Grouper

Giant Grouper and Golden Trevally

Giant Grouper, Zebra Shark and Doctorfish

Giant Grouper and Doctorfish

Giant Grouper and Zebra Shark

Giant Guitarfish and Smallmouth Grunt

Smallmouth Grunt

Shanks and Rays

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Tropical Diver

One thing that I really enjoyed here were watching some of the Jelly Fishes inside Tropical Diver gallery. Knowing that jelly fishes can sting people in the water but seeing such species on its sea like environment makes them look so beautiful. Below were some of my snapshots captured while exploring the gallery.

Tropical Diver gallery has a look of a biodiversity coral reefs of the Indo-Pacific which commonly called “rainforests of the ocean” which can allow divers to experience such similar environments.

Cuttle Fish

White Spotted Jelly

Japanese Sea Nettle

Weedy Scorpionfish and Warty Frogfish

Flamboyant Cuttlefish

Clown Anemonefish

Striped Eel Catfish

Aquanaut Adventure

Before I totally left the Georgia Aquarium, I still tried to explore other areas that I probably missed and I was correct. When I walked at second level I found Aquanaut Adventure area which in my impression was designed for young at heart (or kids).

Seaside Touchpools

This area allows visitors to touch three different kinds of rays but at the time of my visit, that opportunity is not available anymore as the aquarium nears its time for closing for the day.

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Other things to see inside Georgia Aquarium

Deepo’s Undersea 3D Wondershow

Treasures of the Sea (Gift Shop and Exit)

I left Georgia Aquarium just few minutes after 8PM in the evening. Then, I walked back to my hotel via MARTA Train. And that time I hopped on the train at Peachtree Center Station, therefore, I walked a bit in Peachtree Street and took some photos in that part of Downtown before ending my last night in Atlanta.

Peachtree Center where I took MARTA train going back to my hotel near at the airport.

Notes: 1. Plan to visit Georgia Aquarium ? – Please check latest information here 2. Entrance Fee – Please check here for latest updates Note: If you plan to visit other tourist spots in Atlanta, I suggest to get Atlanta City Pass to get discounted prices. 3. Public Transportation Ticket – Use MARTA Breese Card,  here’s the official website, here’s alternative site for the card 4. Directions to Georgia Aquarium using train : If you will ride within Red Line or Gold Line regardless which station you will come from, just remember to get-off at Peachtree Center Station. If you will ride in any of Blue or Green Line, you are required to transfer at Five Points Station and take Red or Gold Line and get off at Peachtree Center Station. At Peachtree Street, turn Right until you reach Baker Street NW and turn left towards Pemberton Place.

It’s all about Georgia Aquarium Warning!!! This post describes experience while visiting Georgia Aquarium last November 2015. What I saw at that time may probably different right now as the aquarium went to renovations and improvements for the past two years.

[lifeunderthewaves]

doctorfish by Crejala swarm of blue doctor fish at a maldivian reef