What is a fish? Part 1

What is a fish?

This might seem like a simple question, but when we consider characteristics that might be used to categorize fish, we find exceptions to every rule.

For example: Fish are aquatic.

We think of fish as aquatic organisms, but there are many fish that are adapted to survive out of water for considerable periods of time. Here are a couple of great examples, the mudskipper and the climbing perch.

Ocean Inspiration: Sarcastic fringehead

A local resident of our nearby Channel Islands, the sarcastic fringehead, demonstrates an amazing adaptation that enables it to communicate with conspecifics and defend its territory.

Three Seas Panama: Light trapping

Gorgeous larval fish and plankton: a sometimes unappreciated, but vital portion, of life in the ocean.

At the Smithsonian in Panama, I constructed a very rudimentary light trap with some nets and my dive light in hopes of catching some larval fishes to show to the Three Seas class. Along with hundreds of thousands of copepods and other tiny creatures, we did get the odd larval fish!