Tag Archive | poetry

Parrot or Fish?

Nov10

Image from Wikipedia

The parrot fish is not a bird

Image by Wild Horizon

It cannot fly. T’would be absurd

To say it could. It cannot speak

But still, its mouth is like a beak

Its beak is formed from bony jaw

The strangest mouth you ever saw

It chews on coral close at hand

And when it’s done, it poops out sand

Photo credit: © Ken Marks

It keeps the coral algae-free

And lives thus symbiotically

The coral thrives; the fish gets fat

So both can benefit from that

At night he makes a sleeping bag

Of slimy slime that doesn’t sag

Inside this sack he’s safe and sound

From predators that swim around

His scales are bright as feathers rare

But parrot fish can’t fly through air

A different name might be preferred

Since this bright parrot’s not a bird

— Ruth Gilmore Ingulsrud

From BBC Earth

Of course it’s a fish. But it is called a parrotfish since it is so colorful and has a very cute beak-like mouth. This “beak” is actually exposed bone and not true teeth. It uses that hard mouth to eat the algae off of the hard coral on which it grows. Parrotfish help to keep coral reefs healthy by eating excess algae. Overfishing removes too many parrotfish from a reef and the health of the ecosystem suffers.

Because a parrotfish scrapes off some of the coral as it cleans, the ground up coral limestone passes through the parrotfish’s body and is pooped out. A large parrotfish can poop out over 800 pounds of sand per year!

Parrotfish are also fascinating because of the way that they can change from female to male. Some parrotfish remain female for their entire lives, but others, as they get older, change from female to male. And as they change, their colors change becoming brighter and more vivid with beautiful markings.

The sleeping habits of some parrotfish are a wonder to see. Before settling down for the night, the parrotfish burps out a slimy mucus sleeping sack which completely covers the fish. This keeps predators, or bigger fish who might like to eat the parrotfish, from smelling their nighttime snack. They swim right by the sack of slime, not knowing that the parrotfish is hiding inside.

The parrotfish is an amazing creature. You can thank the parrotfish for being beautiful, and industrious and interesting as all get out. But you can especially thank the parrotfish for those white, sandy beaches on which we play. Yes, parrotfish poop does contribute to that silky smooth, ground-up limestone sand that is so much fun to dig in. Here’s a silly song by Robert Sams for the BLUE Ocean Film Festival (in 2 versions!) to help you thank the parrotfish:

The Saiga Saga

Feb14

Photo by Tim Flach

How can this be?

You can’t be true!

How could a beast

turn out like you?

Your horns are ridged

and pointy too

Your trunk-like nose

divides in two!

You stand at only

two feet high

A child could look you

in the eye

You’re kin to cow

iflscience.com

and buffalo

You live on plains

where no trees grow

You’re native to

Mongolia

and prone to

melancholia

There are so few

saigaresourcecentre.com

dear saiga left

If you were gone

we’d be bereft

We all should recognize

your worth

An ancient treasure

of the earth

The saiga is a diminutive critter about the size of a small goat with distinctive horns and a highly unusual face. It has a nose like no other; long, inflatable nostrils that appear to be a sort of double-trunk. This nose serves a very important purpose. It filters out the dust which always seems to blow about in its western Mongolian native habitat, and when temperatures drop to below zero, the spacious nose pre-warms the air before it reaches the saiga’s lungs.

It is an herbivore and eats plants; lichens, sagebrush, grasses and bushes. They are ruminants, which means that they bring partially digested plant matter back up into their mouths to chew it again. This is called “chewing their cud” and it helps them get as many nutrients and energy as possible out of the plant matter that they eat.

This critically endangered animal has suffered a series of alarming die-offs in the past few years. In one terrible year, in 2015, over 200,000 saiga dropped dead. Scientist discovered that the cause of death was a bacteria, called “Pasturella” was the cause. With normal temperatures, this bacteria, which lives in the large noses of the saiga, is not a problem, but global warming has increased temperatures in the saiga range and that has proved deadly to the poor little animal. A hot, wet climate with the presence of this bacteria causes internal toxins to form and the saiga drown in their own internal fluids. More info at: The Atlantic and also at: blueplanetbiomes.org

While the saiga are hunted by wolves, foxes and birds of prey, like the Golden Eagle, the biggest threat to the saiga is humans and the global warming that is caused by human activity.

Hopefully, saiga populations will be able to bounce back. These animals can reproduce from a young age and a mother saiga often gives birth to twins. They are ancient critters that roamed across the earth during the Pleistocene or Ice Age period. The saiga survived while the wooly mammoth and saber-tooted tiger died out. We hope this little wonder will be around for generations to come. It is indeed an ancient treasure of the earth.

From theatlantic.com

Swimming Pinecones!

Jul16

Wikimedia Commons

Pinecone Swimmer

Wikipedia

The perky little pinecone fish

Is such a charming fellow

Diminutive but diving deep

With scales bright and yellow

Below his sloping, fishy chin

He plays the genial host

With glowing green bacteria

Wikipedia

He’s like a deep-sea ghost

He hopes that with his tiny spines

You would not want to eat him

But with his luminescent charms

You really ought to meet him

From “Fishes of Australia”

–Ruth Gilmore Ingulsrud

Pinecone Fishfacts:

The pinecone fish, sometimes called the pineapple fish, is a tough little deep-sea dweller that grows to about 5 inches or 13 centimeters in length. It is covered with bright yellow to orange hard scales, called scutes, that are vibrantly outlined in black accentuating its pinecone-like appearance. Its sharp spines and locking dorsal and pelvic fins discourage predators. If they attempt to swallow the swimming pinecone, they risk getting it stuck in their throat.

It prefers to live in rocky areas of the deep ocean with reefs and caves where it can hide during the day. The fish emerges at night to feed on brine shrimp, small fish and plankton that it attracts to its mouth by way of two glowing organs located on its chin. These organs house bioluminescent bacteria that glow an orange-yellow during the day and dim to a bluish-green at night. The bacteria benefits by having a host that provides it with an advantageous place to grow. The pinecone fish benefits by using the the glow to attract meals. This is called a symbiotic relationship where both organisms have something to gain from the relationship.