HulloThere

@jethroreading32

PhD student at Southampton, studying mesopelagic fish ecology. Occasional writer and amateur baker. Tweets about fish in superlatives. Opinions my own.

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HulloThere@jethroreading32· 15h

This was a good use of my holiday

An eclipse. Like, a proper one, over a Spanish lake. God damn.

HulloThere@jethroreading32· 4d

Since May I presented in two conferences (with @thefsbi.bsky.social last week), sailed on two research cruises, and (somewhere among all this) passed my PhD confirmation. Looking forwards to some holiday this week, but I'm very excited and intellectually stimulated by how well the project is going!

Me presenting at the MidSEC conference in Sweden - I've blocked out some graphs to hide my beautiful beautiful data.

Me in the hangar of the RRS James Cook, wearing wet-weather gear and a hardhat and making a hang ten gesture.

Me wearing oilskins, a hardhat, and an inflatable life jacket, rushing across the deck of the RV Tom Crean with an anglerfish in my hands.

Me presenting at the FSBI conference in Southampton. My title slide says "metabolic diversity of deep pelagic teleosts".

HulloThere@jethroreading32· 14d

Ah yeah cool man best way to endear me to your new service is to have a popup that I cannot close occupy the lower 25% of the screen

HulloThere@jethroreading32· 15d

Such a beautiful animal! Somehow I doubt this one has 38 Opsins...

A close up of the (remarkably small) eye of the anglerfish; my little fingernail is in frame, and it is tiny even compared to that. It appears as a shiny wet dot in an expanse of rough, leathery black skin. Her lure is visible stretching out of frame.

HulloThere@jethroreading32· 18d

Out on the RV Tom Crean and had a bit of a landmark day. Technically not my first angler, but this extraordinary, beautiful animal made me genuinely emotional. It’s an absolute privilege to get to meet these animals that I’ve adored for so long! (She’s a triplewart seadevil, Cryptopsaras couesii)

A female anglerfish Cryptopsaras couesii photographed in a plastic tray. She is kind of diamond shaped with a huge head and an upturned mouth. Her lure is long and extends out from her brow, tipped with a small black bulb. Her eyes are so small as to be near invisible. Her skin is satin textured and jet black.

Me holding the same fish in my hands. I’m wearing yellow oilskins, a self-inflating life jacket, and a red hard hat, alongside a pleased-as-punch expression.

HulloThere@jethroreading32· 28d

Who could possibly say why I’m posting this ugly, busted, cringe fish… 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿

HulloThere@jethroreading32· Jul 7

Godspeed You! Black Emperor voice:

A screenshot of a reel showing delicious looking pork served by a street vendor, with the nonsensical translated caption "The chopsticks I encounter in the vegetable market are burned white, and the entrance is gone!"

HulloThere@jethroreading32· Jul 2

HulloThere@jethroreading32· Jun 17

The last few days have been very rewarding, and its been great to chat with so many world-leading mesopelagic scientists. Plus, you couldn't ask for a more picturesque venue!

A brick castle with Scandinavian features, including a clocktower with a weird wavy roof. There is a herb garden in the foreground.

HulloThere@jethroreading32· Jun 17

Really excited to be talking this morning at the inaugural MidSEC conference in Backaskog, Sweden 🐟

The front slide of a presentation entitled "Metabolic diversity of deep pelagic teleosts revealed through otolith-based isotope proxy". The right side of the slide is taken up by a film image showing a diversity of deep pelagic fish on a white plastic surface.

HulloThere@jethroreading32· Jun 10

Could be more extreme; I was introduced to Baker-Miller through this installation by Kapwani Kiwanga that I saw in Copenhagen, was quite overwhelming in person!

A photo from inside a short corridor; the nearest end is insanely blue, the far end is insanely pink, all are lit by fluorescent tubes. Out the end there are white walls visible.

HulloThere@jethroreading32· Jun 8

Cygnet boy!!!

HulloThere@jethroreading32· Jun 4

Ah yeah man for sure I'm asking this every day

A screenshot of a "people also ask" on google that has a kinda unreadable AI thing about what the correct plural of fish is

HulloThere@jethroreading32· May 29

Froze up at this clue on the NYT Mini because mesopelagic isn’t a 5 letter word

HulloThere@jethroreading32· May 27

I loooove bug season saw these two cuties today :)

A bright green metallic weevil with a tastefully ridged back, eyes that seem to sparkle intelligently, perky antennae and a little snout that almost seems to smile :) I think he’s Phyllobius

A big spooky spider wandering across tarmac; her arms are long and dark and her body and head have mottled brown markings. I’m not good at spider ID but I assume she’s an Eratigena?

HulloThere@jethroreading32· May 27

I don’t use Twitter anymore but I never deleted my account, and as a consequence sometimes when googling an obscure fish taxon I’ll rediscover an absolute heater I’d fully forgotten about

A screenshot of a tweet from Nov 2024 that includes a screenshot of several blobby grey fish hanging out on yellow sediment with the caption “Went to the Guentherus aggregation at the edge of the coral reef and no one knew you 💅👀”

HulloThere@jethroreading32· May 25

Dude you have like 6 hours left of your life get out of my room

HulloThere@jethroreading32· May 24

Famously one shows up in Blue Planet 1 and it's like the cutest fish ever filmed. He literally said :3

The fish is looking at you with big dark eyes going :3

HulloThere@jethroreading32· May 18

It kinda reminds me of that one video of a "snowstorm" from the comet that Rosetta orbited. There's a sense that, in a way that is literally true, you are seeing something that human eyes were never meant to observe.

A black-and-white photo of a bizarre alien landscape against a starfield. On the left, a jagged cliff towers high, its lower reaches lost in a smooth drift of dust; boulders areon the bottom right of the image. The sky is dark, but flecked with bright stars and, closer, across the whole images, streaks left by particles of ice and dust.

HulloThere@jethroreading32· May 14

Flat Earth? Chopped. Hollow Moon? Washed. I'm bringing back Randolph Kirkpatrick's Nummulosphaeric hypothesis, which is that the Earth originated as an ocean world, with all the rocks of the crust, including igneous rocks (and even some meteorites!) originating from the aggregation of foram shells.

The cover of a pamphlet, published in 1913, titled "The Nummulosphere - An Account of the ORGANIC ORIGIN of so-called IGNEOUS ROCKS and of ABYSSAL RED CLAYS" by R. Kirkpatrick. The cover illustration is a globe covered in oceans, at the top of which sits King Neptune riding four horses; he is holding his trident, at the tip of which is impaled a foraminiferan.

HulloThere@jethroreading32· May 14

HulloThere@jethroreading32· May 11

Been thinking a lot about these big beefy spider crabs (Paromola cuvieri) last couple of days. Big fan of this pic of one shoving a bit of sponge into a sixgill shark's mouth to make it fuck off.

Two images from a figure given in D'Onghia et al 2018's paper "Using a benthic lander to explore and monitor vulnerable ecosystems in the Mediterranean Sea." The first shows a crab standing over a pile of mackerel waving a tattered bit of sponge above its head with its back legs, seeming to threaten a blackbelly rosefish that has turned away. The second shows a massive shark, mouth open, with a similar crab stuffing a bit of sponge into its gob. Very feisty.

HulloThere@jethroreading32· May 7

Just because I always forget to do this - I'm out at sea again 🥳 Absolutely surreal and incredible that I've managed to do this 10 times in my scientific career so far, and very exciting to be on the RRS Discovery IV for the first time to help with the PAP-SO time series :^]

A picture of me (a schlubby white guy with long brown hair and a bad beard) wearing a navy blue hoody and jeans stood on the deck of a ship. Behind me, the Atlantic Ocean stretches out, tally, fluffy clouds arranged in rank and file to the horizon.

HulloThere@jethroreading32· May 7

Block this account.

AI wank sea cucumber posted by some bozo

HulloThere@jethroreading32· May 7

You still haven't seen it. This is what a sea pig actually looks like.

HulloThere@jethroreading32· May 6

Man, bony fishes absolutely dunk on sharks. Not to brag or anything but the illustration in the bottom contains more diversity in body shape than all living cartilaginous fish do 😤

Two bluesky posts in a row: one celebrates the "extraordinary" diversity of sharks, the other just casually has illustrations of a half dozen of the weirdest fishes in the sea.

HulloThere@jethroreading32· May 2

On today's episode of fat and jobless:

An ROV photograph of an Oxynotus roughshark against a muddy background. The fish is bizarre with a small head, very pointy dorsal fins, and an enormous, swollen belly. Credits: Marine Institute/Kerry Howell

HulloThere@jethroreading32· Apr 29

Nowadays Aphia are often substituted for noodlefishes (Salangidae), a really odd little family related to smelts that I can't stop thinking about at the moment. Sentient beansprouts.

A pile of Salanx bonefish on banana(?) leaves. They are white and translucent, broadly cylindrical with big, goofy, googly eyes. They look kinda like udon or beansprouts.

HulloThere@jethroreading32· Apr 29

They're eaten in Spain and Italy, lightly battered and deep fried (which tbf sounds really yummy). Apparently now though the Aphia aren't doing that well and they're protected in Spain, so largely replaced with the (imo very weird!) noodlefishes (Salangidae)

A plate of chanquetes - whole, small, golden deep-fried fishes served with lemon wedges. They kinda look like segments of onion rings.

HulloThere@jethroreading32· Apr 29

It's so nuts that there's a commercial fishery for transparent gobies (Aphia minuta). Oh yea lemme just go catch some unflavoured gelatin lmao.