Fish Files in your Backyard
Great Barracuda (Sphyraena barracuda)
Where do I live?
I am usually found alone, roaming the open seas for food. All warm seas serve as a good habitat for me, as well as tropical areas of the Pacific and Atlantic Ocean.
What do I look like?
I am a long torpedo shaped fish with a dark green or blue type colouration. My most distinguishing feature is my powerful jaws and razor sharp teeth. I have two dorsal fins that are separated widely. Amazingly, I can reach up to 6 feet in length!
What do I eat?
Hunting is one of my favorite things to do. I use a method of hunting called lie-in-wait ambush. I wait until my prey is within striking distance and then rely on short bursts of speed to catch up to them. My favorite meal is any kind of fish. I usually eat sardines, silversides, mullets, gobies, and herring but I’ll also go for a small lizard or dolphin if I can catch it.
What is unique about me?
I am attracted to shiny, silvery things because to me they sometimes look like dinner. If you are swimming in my habitat try to avoid wearing rings or other jewelry.
How Common am I?
I am fairly common in the wild because I am a top predator and live in such a diverse habitat.
Hagfish (Myxinidae sp.)
Where do I live?
I live in soft mud, in the bottom of all non-tropical oceans at the North and South ends of the world.
What do I look like?
I’m a primitive-looking fish with a long, eel-like body and a single, paddle-like tail fin. My color can be anything from flesh pink to dull blue-grey, with six to eight barbels around my toothless, jawless mouth, a single nostril and maybe black or white eye spots.
What do I eat?
I mostly like to eat marine worms and other invertebrates in the sand and mud at the bottom of the ocean, but I also like dead and dying sea creatures when I can find them. I grip a chunk of dead or rotting flesh with my mouth, then form a knot and use it for leverage to wrench off a chunk.
What is unique about me?
I have four hearts, two brains, and one nostril. Scientists are not even sure if I’m really a fish; I have a skull, but no spinal column or paired fins, and some of us don’t even have scales. But they usually group me with fish because we are the closest relatives to the first ancestors of fish and haven’t changed much over the last 300 million years. We have very primitive structures made of keratin that resemble jaws and teeth, but can only move our tongues, which we use to grab and push food into our mouths. Our simple eye spots can detect light, but we have no lens, eyelids or surrounding muscles; scientists are studying us to learn how eyes evolved.
I am so flexible I can tie myself into knots. I not only use this ability to eat dead and dying animals but also to escape predators. When grabbed by a predator, my main form of defense is to secrete a sticky, slimy, gelatinous goo. In just a few minutes, I can produce enough slime to fill a 20 L bucket. I then tie my body into a knot to escape it and the predator’s grip off their bodies.
People can eat hagfish, I’m quite popular in parts of Asia. I’m also used in ‘eel-skin’ leather, which is made into boots, purses and wallets. Scientists are also studying the properties of our slime to see if they can mimic the molecular structure and create new, super-strong threads and other substances one day.
How Common am I?
I’m not in any danger of going away right now.