HulloThere
@jethroreading32
PhD student at Southampton, studying mesopelagic fish ecology. Occasional writer and amateur baker. Tweets about fish in superlatives. Opinions my own.
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!
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
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)
Who could possibly say why I’m posting this ugly, busted, cringe fish… 🏴🏴🏴🏴🏴
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!
Really excited to be talking this morning at the inaugural MidSEC conference in Backaskog, Sweden 🐟
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!
Froze up at this clue on the NYT Mini because mesopelagic isn’t a 5 letter word
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
Famously one shows up in Blue Planet 1 and it's like the cutest fish ever filmed. He literally said :3
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.
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.
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.
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 :^]
You still haven't seen it. This is what a sea pig actually looks like.
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 😤
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.
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)
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.