Rare Albino Ratfish With Eerie, Silvery Sheen Caught Off Washington Coast; 'It Must Have Been Like A Beacon'

Rare Albino Ratfish With Eerie, Silvery Sheen Caught Off Washington Coast; 'It Must Have Been Like A Beacon'

Source: Underwatertimes

9/24/2007

Rare Albino Ratfish With Eerie, Silvery Sheen Caught Off Washington Coast; 'It Must Have Been Like A Beacon'

Washington -- A ghostly, mutant ratfish caught off Whidbey Island in Washington state is the only completely albino fish ever seen by both the curator of the University of Washington's 7.2 million-specimen fish collection and a fish and wildlife biologist with more than 20 years of sampling fish in Puget Sound.

"Ratfish usually hang out in places with soft, muddy bottoms," says Jon Reum, the aquatic and fishery sciences doctoral student who found the albino ratfish during a UW research project. "The typical ratfish in Puget Sound is brown or black with a smattering of white spots so it blends in with the sediments."

This fish was almost pure white with a crystalline layer near the surface of its skin that gave it a silvery sheen.

"It must have been like a beacon," says Ted Pietsch, UW professor of fisheries and aquatic sciences and curator of the UW fish collection. "Why didn't it get eaten, long before this, by some predator, for example, by a spiny dogfish so common in Puget Sound and that love to devour ratfish""

The foot-long female may have been 2 or 3 years old, Reum and Pietsch estimate, making her a teenager in the ratfish world.

She was caught this summer in about 200 feet of water during a UW research project examining the food web in Hood Canal and Puget Sound. Puget Sound is the nation's second-largest estuary in the Lower 48 after Chesapeake Bay. The city of Seattle, home to about 4 million people, is built on its shores. Puget Sound connects to the Pacific Ocean via the Strait of Juan de Fuca to the north.

Continue...

News Id		Source	Stamp	country
4301	Salmon And Other Fish Predators Rely On No Guts, No Glory Survival Tactic	underwatertimes	2011-09-15	US
4302	Climate change boon to UK seafood	BBC News	2011-09-15	UK
4303	World's largest fishing lure, at 355 pounds, is a real whopper	petethomasoutdoors	2011-09-13	US
4304	Ancient Toothy Fish Found in Arctic—Giant Prowled Rivers	National Geographic News	2011-09-12	US
4305	The World's Worst Place To Catch Fish	Underwatertimes	2011-09-07	US
4306	Colossal Aggregations Of Giant Alien Freshwater Fish As A Potential Biogeochemical Hotspot	Underwatertimes	2011-10-06	GE
4307	Iceland joins alliance to tackle ‘ghost’ fishing gear abandoned at sea	thegrocer	2021-03-10	UK
4308	Dozens change name to salmon	Taipei Times	2021-03-18	TW
4309	Рыбаки предупредили о возможных сбоях в добыче самой дешевой рыбы	rbc	2021-03-17	RU
4310	Nearly 4 million fish killed by winter storm along Texas coast	fox4news	2021-03-10	US
4311	Scientists Discover an 81-Year-Old Snapper	hakaimagazine	2021-03-04	AU
4312	Florida biologists find a live turtle inside a fish	timesnownews	2011-09-06	US
4313	Underground For Millions Of Years, Blind Cave Fish Tell Time On Biological Clocks	Underwatertimes	2011-09-06	CA
4314	Chile Says No To Salmon Farming Off Tierra Del Fuego	Underwatertimes	2011-09-01	CL
4315	Re-Emergence Of Salmon In The Thames Not From Restocking	Underwatertimes	2011-09-02	UK
4316	Angler reels in giant 185lb catfish by himself after friends head to the bar	dailymail	2011-08-30	SP
4317	For the first time, a river is granted official rights and legal personhood in Canada	newswire	2021-02-23	CA
4318	Quebec’s Magpie River first in Canada to be granted personhood	esemag	2021-03-16	CA
4319	A Canadian River Has Been Legally Declared A Person & It's A First For This Country	narcity	2021-02-25	CA
4320	Quebec's Magpie River becomes first in Canada to be granted legal personhood	nationalobserver	2021-02-24	CA
4321	Quebec river granted legal rights as part of global personhood movement	CBC News	2021-02-28	CA
4322	We asked men with fish pictures in their Tinder profile: Why?	thetab	2021-03-03	UK
4323	Bizarre fish evolved for the oceans — but lives on land	gizmodo	2011-08-30	FM
4324	Exotic fish to replace cod	telegraph	2011-08-27	UK
4325	The Same Number Of Fishermen, But Less Salmon In Spanish Rivers	underwatertimes	2011-08-26	SP

172 of [217 - pages.]