Albino Ratfish

Pez7378 · Post by **Pez7378** » Tue Sep 25, 2007 3:18 pm

I would love to see one of these beauties during a deep night dive!

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/l ... sh24m.html

Seth T. · Post by **Seth T.** » Tue Sep 25, 2007 6:02 pm

Very interesting. I certainly wouldn't call it a "beauty" though. I think that would freak me right out to see that ghostly thing on a night dive.

gomi_otaku · Post by **gomi_otaku** » Tue Sep 25, 2007 7:45 pm

I had wondered about the fate of this fish ever since it was mentioned, since the original post didn't say if it was kept alive after being *trawled* in the name of science.

BTW, last time I was at Three Tree, right by the wolf eel den my buddy and I both noticed an unusual sight- a ratfish with pure white eyes, like it had cataracts or something. I noticed him do a double take, and waited for it to swing around, and the other eye was white as well. I had to find another ratfish to confirm what I thought, that it isn't normal. I don't know if it could see or not, or hunted by other senses, and why it hadn't been picked off by any predator (we noticed on another dive there a couple ratfish with blunt looking tails, and some wandering dogfish)
gomi_

Joshua Smith · Post by **Joshua Smith** » Tue Sep 25, 2007 10:49 pm

Even though ratfish can grow up to three feet in length, people rarely see them because they prefer very deep water, says Greg Bargmann, research scientist for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. Ratfish will move into the shallows at night to feed but rarely strike a baited hook. Only net fishermen encounter them regularly.

I don't agree with this here scientific-type statement. I saw a ratfish on my very first open water dive at cove 1, and practically every dive since. I've seen them above 20 fsw plenty of times.....sure, I've seen them below 100' lots of times, too, but, heck, "people rarely see them?"

Burntchef · Post by **Burntchef** » Tue Sep 25, 2007 10:51 pm

we saw large groups of them under the tdock at muk last week, maybe 50fsw if that.

Cold_H2O · Post by **Cold_H2O** » Tue Sep 25, 2007 11:47 pm

Nailer99 wrote:
Even though ratfish can grow up to three feet in length, people rarely see them because they prefer very deep water, says Greg Bargmann, research scientist for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. Ratfish will move into the shallows at night to feed but rarely strike a baited hook. Only net fishermen encounter them regularly.
I don't agree with this here scientific-type statement. I saw a ratfish on my very first open water dive at cove 1, and practically every dive since. I've seen them above 20 fsw plenty of times.....sure, I've seen them below 100' lots of times, too, but, heck, "people rarely see them?"

You appear to have us confused with "people" We are not "people" we are DIVERS !! $\:D/$

I think that is what the guy ment by his quote... : )

Chris · Post by **Chris** » Wed Sep 26, 2007 8:13 am

We brought up a deep tow, and I knew it was going to have hundreds, if not thousands, of ratfish," he recalls. "And then I saw it."

Gleaming like a pearl in the mass of brown was a pure white albino, a rare phenomenon in the aquatic world.

"This animal would just stand out like a beacon," says UW fisheries professor Ted Pietsch. "I don't know why it wasn't eaten long before."

I don't really agree with their little expedition, did you see all the ratfish on their boat floor?

gomi_otaku · Post by **gomi_otaku** » Wed Sep 26, 2007 12:46 pm

Yeah, we're just gonna pull up every fish that is in this area, so we can see how many there are, and how the populations are doing. Um...now that we have them all on the boat, I think we can safely say the population at the bottom is currently...um... *ZERO*. ](*,) That's on the same level as the dolphin killers in China

I saw a ratfish at shilshole marina in less than 5', my wife and I were walking past and I saw it circling around looking like it was hunting. We watched it for 5-10 minutes, it wasn't distressed.
So, I'm assuming to a non-diver, any water that you can't see below the surface is *DEEP WATER*
gomi_

Fishstiq · Post by **Fishstiq** » Thu Oct 04, 2007 7:57 pm

That would rock!!

Tangfish · Post by **Tangfish** » Thu Oct 04, 2007 9:05 pm

That's pretty cool!

Joshua Smith · Post by **Joshua Smith** » Thu Oct 04, 2007 10:11 pm

gomi_otaku wrote:Yeah, we're just gonna pull up every fish that is in this area, so we can see how many there are, and how the populations are doing. Um...now that we have them all on the boat, I think we can safely say the population at the bottom is currently...um... *ZERO*. ](*,) That's on the same level as the dolphin killers in China

I saw a ratfish at shilshole marina in less than 5', my wife and I were walking past and I saw it circling around looking like it was hunting. We watched it for 5-10 minutes, it wasn't distressed.
So, I'm assuming to a non-diver, any water that you can't see below the surface is *DEEP WATER*
gomi_

Yeah, pretty much.

Joshua Smith · Post by **Joshua Smith** » Thu Oct 04, 2007 10:12 pm

Cold_H2O wrote: You appear to have us confused with "people" We are not "people" we are DIVERS !! $\:D/$

I think that is what the guy ment by his quote... : )

Exactly.

Joshua Smith · Post by **Joshua Smith** » Thu Oct 04, 2007 10:14 pm

Calvin wrote:That's pretty cool!

Totally non-sequitur. Did you quit taking your ADD medication again? Damnit, I put all your pills in those little plastic boxes with the days of the week on them for you every Sunday...... ](*,)

Seth T. · Post by **Seth T.** » Fri Oct 05, 2007 12:10 pm

I guess you better start holding his hand!

rjarnold · Post by **rjarnold** » Wed Oct 24, 2007 1:12 pm

gomi_otaku wrote:Yeah, we're just gonna pull up every fish that is in this area, so we can see how many there are, and how the populations are doing. Um...now that we have them all on the boat, I think we can safely say the population at the bottom is currently...um... *ZERO*. ](*,) That's on the same level as the dolphin killers in China

These trawls have been going on for a very long time and are there to monitor the health of Hood Canal. Despite all those ratfish on the deck that you saw in the picture, that trawl probably didn't even put a dent in the population - if ratfish populations were that dire, why have their populations been going up over the years? Believe me, those trawls do more good than harm and collect invaluable data. We don't *like* killing fish - our goal is to monitor and help them when it's needed and unfortunately the methods for collecting the knowledge of whether or not populations are in trouble often involving sampling (and hence killing) those fishes.

The people on board tried to save the albino ratfish for donation to the Seattle Aquarium but it didn't survive. Tissue samples for DNA studies were taken and it now lives in the UW Fish Collection for any to see (yes, the UW Fish Collection is a public venue that you can arrange to take a tour of if you would like to do so. ALSO, if you have a picture of a fish that you cannot identify, you are more than welcome to come down and have us check it out - we most likely can figure it out just from the picture, but if not, we have tons of identification guides as well as probably having the actual species of fish in the collection).

The person that wrote the story on the Albino Ratfish must have known that scuba divers often see them since I was there and said 'Yeah, we scuba divers see them quite a lot'. I don't know why that little tidbit was left out - not important enough? *shrugs* But yes, it is known that scuba divers encounter them quite often...they're probably my favorite fish to see in all actuality.