RESEARCH OPPORTUNITY: deep-sea fish and food webs, Dec 2003

um... said:
Oh, I thought is was like "I'm a little TPOT, short and stout...". (No theory regarding what the 'H' was all about.) :oops:
Are you a (trained) biologist?
Well, yes... yes I am (damn my modesty :wink:)
Diplomas have yet to transformed themselves into actual employment *sigh* but BSc Oceanography with Marine biology and MSc Aquatic Resources Management... and two months chopping up O.cyanea in Indonesia for my project (study of the local octopus fishery, assessment of stock and fishing pressure)... that was just amazing :wink: I even got used to the stench of octopuses rotting in the heat :yuck: :smile:

By the way, anybody knows a cheap-ish way to conduct a statolith analysis... I brought back a good batch of those (couldn't do it in the field) but all the methods involved rather expansive resin and subsequent grinding before counting the growth rings... any thoughts or experiences?

TPOTH
 
TPOTH said:
By the way, anybody knows a cheap-ish way to conduct a statolith analysis... I brought back a good batch of those (couldn't do it in the field) but all the methods involved rather expansive resin and subsequent grinding before counting the growth rings... any thoughts or experiences?

TPOTH

Hi TPOTH,

I used a thermoplastic cement called "Crystal Bond" for my statoliths. I got it from Aussie at about $50 (Aussie) a tube. It's quite solid (you can chip it up with scissors and then just place a little on the slide with our stat and heat on a hot plate) and its lasts FOREVER! I've glued several thousand stats and still have 2/3 of a tube left! The beauty of it is that you can remelt it to adjust the statolith or to polish both sides!!!

As for grinding? I used 400 grit wet silicon carbide paper, followed by 1200 grit (around $1.80 a sheet NZ) which you can get from any hardware store, I finished up with 0.05 micron polishing alumina (VERY EXPENSIVE!) on polishing felt (I used an aussie product called "Leuco Lefelt"). But I bet jewellers polishing paste would work too.

Hope this helps

Cheers

Jean

Cheers
 
myopsida said:
Steve O'Shea said:
Oh ....

.... need 'square' emoticon ... but I guess this one will do for now :tomato:

why not use: :oshea:

:shock: Why is M being positively horrid to O? Shall I expose your true identity to the Tonmo community dear Sir? 99.9999999% of tonmo-goers won't realise this, but M is a rather important fellow :grad: in this particular research proposal.
 
[quote="Steve O'Shea.
:shock: Why is M being positively horrid to O? .[/quote]
Occum's Razor Steve my man - why have 1,000s of emoticoms when a few will suffice. :heee:
Now, seriously, if you can come up with funding to investigate the predation of squids by Onchorhynchus spp. in NZ waters I'll happily devote a few weeks to the sampling programme, and what's more I'll supply the collecting equipment & artificial stimuli required to obtain a representative tshawytscha or two
 
Steve O'Shea said:
Oh ....

.... need 'square' emoticon ... but I guess this one will do for now :tomato:
Here you go, Steve :biggrin2:
bigsquaregrin.gif


TPOTH Koldun
 
Jean said:
TPOTH said:
By the way, anybody knows a cheap-ish way to conduct a statolith analysis... I brought back a good batch of those (couldn't do it in the field) but all the methods involved rather expansive resin and subsequent grinding before counting the growth rings... any thoughts or experiences?

TPOTH

Hi TPOTH,

I used a thermoplastic cement called "Crystal Bond" for my statoliths. I got it from Aussie at about $50 (Aussie) a tube. It's quite solid (you can chip it up with scissors and then just place a little on the slide with our stat and heat on a hot plate) and its lasts FOREVER! I've glued several thousand stats and still have 2/3 of a tube left! The beauty of it is that you can remelt it to adjust the statolith or to polish both sides!!!

As for grinding? I used 400 grit wet silicon carbide paper, followed by 1200 grit (around $1.80 a sheet NZ) which you can get from any hardware store, I finished up with 0.05 micron polishing alumina (VERY EXPENSIVE!) on polishing felt (I used an aussie product called "Leuco Lefelt"). But I bet jewellers polishing paste would work too.

Hope this helps
It sure does! Thanks a lot for all the information. Gonna have to "sacrifice" a few statoliths to get used to the technique and see what amount of grinding i need to be able to see the rings.
*initiating Google search for Crystal Bond safe search on*

Thanks again! :notworth:

TPOTH Koldun
 
TPOTH said:
It sure does! Thanks a lot for all the information. Gonna have to "sacrifice" a few statoliths to get used to the technique and see what amount of grinding i need to be able to see the rings.
*initiating Google search for Crystal Bond safe search on*

Thanks again! :notworth:

TPOTH Koldun

Glad the info helped. If you can't find the crystal bond on the net pm me and I'll get the info from our lab tech!

You'll get the hang of grinding pretty quickly, the best advice I have is to polish in a circular motion (otherwise you get deep scratches you can't polish out) and to check progess frequently on the ol' scope!

J
 
We have one certain PhD and 1 certain Masters candidates undertaking this project, one on scampi and one on orange roughy fisheries; there's also one more possible (highly likely) PhD candidate looking at this for the smooth and black oreo fisheries. Not bad for a new project!

This will reveal extremely interesting information, particularly on the deep-sea cephalopod diet of a number of major commercial fish species, and of course all of the incidental bycatch fish species. I'd imagine there'd be some rather interesting posts and contributions from new cephalopod fanatics soon.

Steve
 
Because they've been giving me such a hard time of late, on the left is Pierre (aka TPOTH), and on the right, Matthew Jones. These are two poor souls that are doing their PhD's on deep-sea fish, food-web construction ... and both are going on telly this avo (and are having kittens about it). :twisted:

That's an 'orange roughy' in the middle (and yes, Pierre's eyes are naturally, normally 'Dracula red').

download.php
 
Steve O'Shea said:
Because they've been giving me such a hard time of late, on the left is Pierre (aka TPOTH), and on the right, Matthew Jones. These are two poor souls that are doing their PhD's on deep-sea fish, food-web construction ... and both are going on telly this avo (and are having kittens about it). :twisted:

That's an 'orange roughy' in the middle (and yes, Pierre's eyes are naturally, normally 'Dracula red').

You know we are just little rays of sunshine!

Here's a couple from the shoot. Don't have any of Pierre or moi because, well we were busy and they're my photo's.

Here we have the lovely Emma and the errr... lovely Steve. Notice our lovely new microscope in the foreground....

download.php


download.php
 
It's been quite a while since anyone has posted on this thread (come on guys - let's disseminate what you've found out!!!).

At any rate, I've just returned from a trip down south, gave a talk in Taranaki last evening (conservation, food webs, reserves, fisheries impacts etc.), and after the talk I did what most people do ... went for a wee walk and spoke to some fisherfolk.

What a jolly great bunch of people they were (recreational fishermen). Most marlin are tagged and released, but a number don't survive the fight. It might sound like hypocracy on my part - to allow, or at least not to criticise one form of fishing, but to be hell-bent on criticising another - but I cannot afford to alienate myself from everyone (the lesser of two evils).

Anyway, there I was when this marlin was landed, and I had a jolly good talk to these folk and walked away with the fish. Pierre, whether he knows it or not, will be skeletonising this thing for his comparative study of fish skeletal morphology and diet (it's currently in the boot of the truck).

These fish are well-known to be cephalopod eating, except only 3 squid have been found in the guts of all landed specimens (~ 30) thus far this year. Of course my talk had been heavily squid-oriented. I asked whether there had been anything else unusual about the fish this year - and yes, they'd all been small and very thin (this one had three mackeral in its gut).

Looks like the loss of cephs is impacting whales and apex-fish species alike.
 

Attachments

  • conv_287735.jpg
    conv_287735.jpg
    256 KB · Views: 76
Da Master aka Steve O'Shea said:
It's been quite a while since anyone has posted on this thread (come on guys - let's disseminate what you've found out!!!).
We did? ... i mean yeah! we did! i think.. :oops:
... went for a wee walk and spoke to some fisherfolk.
:shock: spoke??? Could this be the beginning of the bettering (*dodges bullets from the spelling squad*) of your relationship with the fishing community?
The mind boggles....(great game!)

Anyway, there I was when this marlin was landed, and I had a jolly good talk to these folk and walked away with the fish. Pierre, whether he knows it or not, will be skeletonising this thing for his comparative study of fish skeletal morphology and diet (it's currently in the boot of the truck).

*drools*
:cool2:
Can't wait.... just need a real huge bucket... and loose again my recently re-acquired sense of smell :frown:

TPOTH
 

Shop Amazon

Shop Amazon
Shop Amazon; support TONMO!
Shop Amazon
We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon and affiliated sites.
Back
Top