Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
the resting parrotfish can be easily approached and sometimes even gen-
tly touched. They looked like easy targets for our hand nets. We tried
but had grossly underestimated the speed and power of a rudely awak-
ened parrotfish.
Kelly McColloch was the first to give it a try. He placed his net in
front of a big sleeping parrotfish's head and gave it a quick goose in the
tail. The parrotfish took o¤ like a rocket and was gone, leaving a gap-
ing hole in the end of Kelly's precious net. The strong nylon didn't even
slow it down.
Never ones to be beaten by a mere fish, we put our supposedly su-
perior intelligence to work designing a special parrotfish-proof hand
net made out of heavy-duty braided nylon mesh of the type used to
capture dolphins and killer whales. The conspicuousness of the heavy
netting wasn't a problem because it would only be used when it was
dark. This time the net held, though for a few moments before we could
get it into our net collecting bag we found ourselves being dragged
around by the furiously swimming fish.
Swimming back to the boat in the dark carrying a large, angry par-
rotfish was one of the few occasions I thought of sharks in the Gulf
while night diving, the ability of sharks to pick up on the vibrations
put out by struggling fish being well known. All's well that ends well,
however, because we never saw a shark. I'm sure there must have been
sharks that saw us, but apparently we didn't interest them.
After a few days of collecting, we had another chore to attend to: the
fish we had already caught now needed to be fed. This became a daily
job and involved much hook-and-line fishing for other species to fillet,
chop, or grind up and toss into our floating aquariums. By the time the
receivers had a few hundred fish, our days and nights were pretty full.
Although night diving and hand netting was an e¤ective collecting
method, it wasn't practical for all fish. Some species could be collected
only during the day. The methods we used to catch the diurnally ac-
tive fishes worked in reverse for the large-eyed nocturnally active fishes
like squirrelfish and cardinalfish. They're the night shift on the reef.
They take over when the sun goes down and are out actively foraging
for food after dark. As soon as dawn comes, they retreat to a dark cave
or crevice and wait quietly for nighttime to come again.
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