(no subject)

[senoritafish]

Here's some artwork of the fish these boats have been bringing in.



This is a piece of art that used to hang in our regional directors office. When she retired, she gave it to a biologist in the La Jolla office, and he let me photograph it before he took it home with him. This is gyotaku, or fish printing. To di it you take a real fish, and paint in lifelike colors, then roll it against a piece of paper. In Japan, it was used as a record of fish catches before goverment weights and measure came into being.

These are Pacific sardines - Sardinops sagax. They're absolutely huge, too, about 300 mm long and fat, compared to the ones we usually see here in southern CA,


Detail:



This is an original painting of a Pacific mackerel (Scomber japonicus) which was done for a Califonia Fish & Game Bulletin on mackerel fisheries. It was originally published in 1931. Someone found it in a storeroom, and brought it to me, saying "You have more use for this, since you're the Coastal Pelagic Species biologist." I think we need to have it nicely framed to hang in the hallway, but at this point it's sitting, carefully wrapped up, on top of one of my cupboards. The signature is "Gerrard Bakker, Jr."

Comments

[calypso72]

Beautiful fishies.

I was on the phone with my brother, a physical oceanographer, earlier and he just got back from the Delaware Water Gap where trout are migrating up to waters they don't usually inhabit due to high temperatures. He also said there had been some major fish kills, but couldn't understand why. I had to explain anoxia to him (he never really considered the biological component of the water, just its physical properties)....

[poetpaladin.livejournal.com]

Thank you for sharing. I didn't know the Japanese did that.