How To Protect The Ocean
SUFB 068: Deep Sea Animal Uses Red Light to Lure Fish to Their Death
The Deep Sea Relative of the jellyfish, Eranna, uses a red bioluminescent light to attract fish into their stinging tentacles. The animal's use of red light in the deep sea is important because researchers have assumed deep sea animals cannot sea red light. Researchers assume fish are lured to the deep sea by this red light in hopes of food and meet their fate instead.
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Show Notes:
http://www.speakupforblue.com/session68
Welcome to the Speak Up For Blue Podcast, session 68. Today on the episode, we've got a new species, a deep sea species that kills fish by attracting it with red lights. We're going to talk all about that on today's episode of the Speak Up For Blue Podcast. Welcome to the Speak Up For Blue Podcast, helping you get involved in ocean conservation. And now, here's your host, Love's football so much. I mean, he really, really likes it, Andrew Lewin. Hey everybody, welcome back to another exciting episode of the Speak Up For Blue Podcast, your voice for the ocean. I am your host, Andrew Lewin, founder, speakupforblue.com, marine ecologist and self-proclaimed ocean printer. And today, we are going to talk about a new species. It's kind of something I've been starting every once in a while. I might pick days to do something. And lately, there have been new species popping up that people have discovered things of maybe they're not completely new species, but there's a new behavior or something like that. So I'm going to start putting those together and seeing if we can make one day of the week out of that. Maybe, who knows, maybe it'll be a Tuesday or a Thursday or something like that. But we're going to see more of this as we go along. But today, we're going to talk, it's not going to be a long episode, but we're going to talk about a sort of like, it looks like a translucent species. We're going to put up the picture of the species on the blog post on the show notes. So speakupforblue.com/session68. Excuse me, I got a tickle on my throat, so I might cough a couple of times, but anyway, this is a new species called arena specimen, and it's found in the deep sea off the coast of California. It's a cousin of the jellyfish, or relative of the jellyfish, deep sea cousin, deep sea relative of the jellyfish, and it flashes glowing red lights by twitching, stinging cells. So just like the jellyfish, jellyfish, you'll see a lot of times, especially at night, it'll bioluminesce. So it basically takes a chemical in its body and it converts it to light. So that's bioluminescence, and you, a good analogy is, you know, those little fluorescent sticks that embracelets and necklaces that people sell to your kids when you're at some kind of show that's at night, and you have to pay an exorbitant amount of money and to buy those kind of sticks, and then they last for maybe 10 minutes, and then the kids want more. I'm not bitter. I haven't gone through that before. You can tell this. Detect the sarcasm there. But anyway, it's similar to that. It takes a chemical, the chemical mixes, and then boom, you've got light, and it's very similar to how it works in an animal, and especially in the deep sea where it's dark. Sunlight doesn't hit the deep sea. So flashing lights becomes very important, and a lot of times it uses a distraction for a lot of animals that might be prey to other predators, or other animals that are predating on them. Sometimes it uses a distraction maybe to make them look bigger, or just kind of make them look like another species, something like that that they mean that those predators may not want to eat. So they use that as sort of a strategy and evolutionary strategies to not get eaten. This however is one of the fewer species that have been detecting the deep sea that uses it as a lure. Now of course, saying that the anglerfish, one of the most popular deep sea fish, uses bioluminescence to attract fish, so they'll dangle, they've got this little bait on the top of their head, they'll dangle that, they'll make it glow in the dark. All you see is this little tiny animal, and that some animals might want to eat, and then they get closer and closer and closer, and then boom, that anglerfish kind of lights up. If you've seen the movie Nemo, you know what I'm talking about, it's of course it's not perfectly depicted in a cartoon, but it's very similar to that. You know, but this one, this is the first time an invertebrate, so it's something without a backbone, does this kind of thing, or is detecting the deep sea to do this thing. And what's even more interesting is it actually uses red light. Now red light is not normally seen in the deep sea because usually it requires sunlight to emit red light, but what this animal does, according to researchers at Monterey Bay Aquarium, is it takes a chemical, translates it to blue light, which is a shorter wavelength. That wavelength is emitted as a longer wavelength, which is red, and it kind of has that red bioluminescence. Now what's interesting is that it attracts fish, well what the researchers found is they collected a couple of these instruments, or these animals, through like ROVs, and they're very delicate, they collected, I think it was three specimens, yes, three specimens, and they were able, in two of them, they found fish parts in their bodies. So obviously these fish are being attracted by the red light, right? That's the speculation, so it's not obvious, I guess, but that's the speculation, and more research is probably needed. This research came out back in July in the Journal of Science, according to this article I'm reading on LifeScience.com, we'll post the link in the show notes, which is SpeakUpForBlue.com/session68. But what they do essentially is, what was interesting is the researchers are saying that normally fish and other invertebrates, they can't see red light, or that's what it was thought. Now it looks like they can, because it emits red light all the time, the assumption is that the fish come closer because they see the red light, and then they get either caught up in the tentacles, because they've got stinging tentacles, and then they get eaten by the animal. So it's a very interesting concept, and we're looking in the deep sea, which we know, we're still finding animals that have these different strategies for feeding, different strategies for avoiding getting eaten, all this kind of stuff. And I just think it's absolutely amazing to see something off the coast of California in the deep sea, because this takes me back to an interview that we did, the last interview that we did, I think it was Bill Tisott, who was talking about how we need to protect deep sea areas as a proactive, I guess proactive nature. We need to just need to protect these areas because they're very important, and of course discovering these things kind of help, because we're discovering new species, we're discovering new feeding strategies, and I think it makes it really cool, but it also teaches us a lot about the deep ocean, which allows us to understand more, and maybe allows us to find something that will help us in some sort of way, the human population, whether it be in some kind of medicine, or some kind of food, or even some kind of strategy, I mean, there's lots of things that can happen that we don't know about, and that can potentially help us. So yeah, so it's very interesting, and the article goes on to say, "By luminescence is almost exclusively the domain of sea creatures." One of the handful of exceptions is the firefly, right? You see the same thing in a firefly at night, at certain times of the year. So I just think it's interesting how you get a cousin or a relative of the jellyfish who can catch fish with red light that's never really been seen before, and I hope to see more research come out of this, because I'm interested to see if that's actually the case, if we actually see that in these animals, and this is a new thing that happens. So I think this is going to be kind of cool. If we see any more articles on this, we'll definitely follow up. But it's definitely a cool kind of thing. So yeah, like I said, a short podcast today, I just wanted to let you know about that. I think I'm always fascinated by luminescence. I worked in the Gulf of Mexico when I was back in 2002, so quite a while ago. It was one of my first jobs out of university, and I was a marine technician on this ship in the Gulf of Mexico that was going out of Louisiana. And we were on with some researchers, and what was cool is that night, they were looking at optics at night, and it was that night, and what we would do is the head researcher, the principal investigator, PI, chief scientist, got us out on the stern of the boat, the back of the boat, stern of the boat, and we looked over the side, and he said, "Just take a look and just watch the lights just flash as the engines or as the propellers kind of stir up the water." And you can see just these beautiful bioluminescence kind of pop up all over the place as the water is getting churned up by the props. And it's just, I tell you, it's one of the most amazing things. It's like seeing stars in the ocean. It's probably one of the most amazing things I've ever seen in my entire life. Top 10, at least, closely behind the birth of my kids. But it's just one of those things where you're in awe that this is such a natural thing in the ocean to have this bioluminescence, and to see it live is just a phenomenal opportunity. So if you're ever out on a boat at night, take a look over the side. If there's enough plankton in there that produces bioluminescence, you'll see the lights, or you might see a flash of lights. And I think that's one of those things that is just you have to see, and you'll be amazed by it. I could watch it all night. All night. In fact, sometimes I did when I was over there. So it was just one of those things that I wanted to share with you, and I hope to share more of this kind of stuff with you, and do go a little more in depth with each of these species. But maybe even add some videos so that as I speak, you guys can actually see it. And the one good thing that I could do is if I had more time to spend on it, and I'm working towards that. I'm working on actually doing this podcast, adding video to this podcast full time. And one way you can help me get to that place is you can, when I release, I'm launching a crowdfunding campaign on patreon.com on Monday, December 14th. So that's this Monday coming up, if you're listening to it, today's the eight. So then the Monday coming up, you're going to see, or sorry, it's the 9th that when you're hearing this, or when I'm releasing this, but you're going to see a page that comes up. I'll give you the link. And it's patreon.com. It allows people to love what specific creators do, whether they be artists, whether they be YouTube creators, whether they be podcast creators, all different sorts. It allows people to go and see what they like and allows them to support on a monthly basis, you know, something that they enjoy listening to. And there will be different levels of support. So I think some of it would be like a dollar a month, some will be $5 a month. There's a level of $10 a month, $25, $50, $100, $500. And there's different incentives to kind of get people to do different things. Whatever you're comfortable, if you're comfortable supporting this podcast, I would really appreciate it. Like I said, it'll allow me to go into more depth. It'll allow me to bring on the more, the more support I get from this community in terms of the financial support, the more I can bring people on to do more research and really look at stuff and go on site to specific projects and video stuff and get it out there so that you can see what's going on and what people are doing around the world to make the ocean a better place. And you can have their advice on how you and me at home can do this kind of stuff. So it's my passion. It's what I love to do. And I would appreciate your support if you do it, if not, no worries. I understand. But if you're, if you'd like to support, there will be a Patreon page coming up on Monday, December 14th, it'll allow me to do more podcast episodes like this, maybe a little more in depth, maybe a little video, so you can actually see these organisms as I talk, so it'll be a lot of fun. So you can do that December 14th on Monday. I'll send out the link. And if you want to get on the email list, or I can send out this link, then you can get on that by just going to the show, if you're on your smartphone, you'll see in the show notes on the actual, well, you'll see it on the blog, on the website, you'll see a place where you can click on that and get into that email, on the email list where you can know when I actually launch the page. But you can also on your phone, I know on my iPhone, I have a podcast app that actually shows the notes in there, and you can just click on there to get. In fact, if you get on the list now, you get 10 tips on how to live for a better ocean that I've created to help you, to help people who are just getting into ocean conservation, how they can actually do ocean conservation, and they don't have to worry about the overwhelm or where they can help each other out, so, or how they can help. So anyway, that's, that's the show for today. I really appreciate it. So we talked about the, the arena, a deep sea relative of the, of the, of the jellyfish who attracts fish, eats fish using red luminescence, right, bioluminescence, converting from a chemical to a short wave blue light, a blue light to a long wave red light, and it actually brings fish maybe even down from the, from shallower areas to attract them, if, if that's the case, because they, the researchers don't think that either deep sea fish or other deep sea organisms can actually see red light. So it might be fish that are coming from the top. So I think that's pretty, that's a pretty cool discovery. Um, so anyway, that, all the show notes are on just, uh, www.speakupforblue.com/session68. Thank you for listening. You've been listening to Speak Up for Blue Podcast. I am your host, Andrew Lewin, happy conservation.