Wow, that’s a post a day since Sunday. I am all kinds of productive.
I reached a milestone in my thesis research shortly before Christmas when I looked through my final set of dogfish puke. All told I’ve gone through the stomach contents of either 399 or 400 spiny dogfish (there may be a “phantom” stomach in there, or I just can’t count) and I can honestly say that each one was like Christmas morning for a shark nerd. You just never know what you’re going to find in there (dogfish really will eat just about anything, and being larger than the actual dogfish is apparently no object to being on the menu). My brother got a spiffy new camera, and was kind enough to take some high-rez, artsy pictures of some choice chunks of shark vomit. Enjoy the sights below the fold.
All photos by Ben Bangley.
The camera zooms in on a bay anchovy, while a Loligo squid looks on nervously.
Tropical wrasse from a spiny dogfish caught south of Cape Hatteras.
Mantis shrimp in the sample jar.
Tonguefish, looking like a muppet even in death.
One of many large Atlantic menhaden. Note how cleanly the head has been sawed off by the dogfish's teeth. Squalus acanthias doesn't mess around.
A seahorse, one of the more unusual finds. This one might upset the kids.
Snake eel. Apparenlty a lot of small bottom-dwelling fish look like muppets.
Juvenile black sea bass. These fish are quite tasty when they get older.
Both of these octopi came from the same dogfish, which means this shark likes its calamari. Which is something it and I have in common.
And that’s a wrap on digging through my samples. I still have some of the more digest ones to ID by scales and bones, but for the most part the ID portion is done. I hope you’ve enjoyed looking at these stomach content pictures as much as I’ve enjoyed making dogfish puke them up.
Great Pictures! much better than ones from a camera phone