Been a while since I posted anything due to other imperatives, but I was recently able to get back to the freezer to work on some really, really cool specimens. Will post more as I go, but here are a few of the highlights.
Leopard shark (Triakis semifasciata)
This specimen is incredibly beautiful. The colors and patterns were amazing. I kept the head to prepare the skull and we skinned it. Part of the skin and a few vertebrae will go back to the aquarium that gave the specimen and will be used for educative purposes.
Soup of the day!
Plenty of cool specimens: batfish, pineapplefish, porcupinefish, trumpetfish, stonefish, dentex head and more.
Pelagic stingray (Pteroplatytrygon violacea), Mediterranean moray (Muraena helena) and a tetraodontiform
We actually processed several stingrays as I recently got a batch of them from a local fisherman recently. Some specimens will go to other researchers.
Pineapplefish (Cleidopus gloriamaris)
These fish are incredible. I'm planning to keep the entire dermal skeleton and it was not easy to gut them without damaging the fish or removing the scales.
Mediterranean moray head
Mediterranean moray head (dissected)
It's incredible how small the skull actually is once all the fat and muscle is removed. These fish also have an incredible anatomy, and of course we saved the pharyngeal jaws (check this out: http://www.wired.com/2014/04/absurd-creature-of-the-week-this-eel-fires-extra-alien-jaws-out-of-its-throat/)
Estuarine stonefish (Synanceia horrida)
Now this is one of the coolest specimens we had. I love scorpaeniforms so it was fantastic to work on a stonefish. Amazingly, the bones of this specimen had a very noticeable blue/green color (not unlike some needlefish), not sure if the complete skeleton is like that though, we'll see.
