On Friday I officially wrapped up going through all my stomach samples from my cruise aboard the NOAA/NMFS R/V Henry B. Bigelow. Though a lot of identification work remains, it’s nice knowing that I at least have one complete data set totally cataloged. In honor of this milestone, I set up a little shark puke photo shoot for some of the more exotic and otherwise interesting prey items recovered from spiny dogfish trawled up aboard the Bigelow.
Bony fish made up the vast majority of what came tumbling out of my puke bags. Here are some of the oddballs and badass prey species.
Of course not all the fish are bony. This next image breaks my usual rule of not using pictures of prey items that are significantly digested, but it has enough identifying features to tell what it is and is really interesting to find in a dogfish stomach.
Of course not everything in the spiny dogfish diet has an internal skeleton. Also, studying gut contents can be good for smack talk. On that note, in your face Bok and Lisieski!
Yet another milestone in the ol’ thesis. Now I just have about a hundred more samples from the Cape Hatteras and I’ll be done being wrist-deep in shark puke. Oh, who am I kidding, shark puke will probably be in my destiny for a long time. And I wouldn’t have it any other way…