Barreleye fish | Hacker News Reader

Barreleye fish

mbari.org

78 pointsyottoy12 comments

Whenever I hear of them, I have to think of the T-Shirt: https://www.neatoshop.com/product/Barreleye-Fish

The MBARI (Monterey Bay Area Research Institute) does a lot of cool research and outreach through the Monterey Bay Aquarium on the central California Coast. They are uniquely suited for this since the Monterey Bay has a giant canyon extending close to the shoreline. This allows them to get to very deep water just a few miles offshore vs 100s of miles for similar depths in other areas. Their ROV (Remotely Operated Vehicles) for deep water research and the support catamaran which launched them were world class, probably still are.

One of the interesting things about this fish is how it was represented like a duck-billed flathead fish before this videos. Is not easily recognizable in famous scientific books like the Clofnam, for example. It was like discovering that Tyrannosaurus Rex had an elephant's trunk.

It reminds me how limited the human imagination is, especially in relation to fictional alien life forms.

A fish capable of self-reflection!

Jokes aside, I wonder does the fish comprehend that it's seeing the world from under a cover.

Wonder how it tastes. I hear anglerfish tail is similar to lobster. Every once in a while I try to see if there are folks out there exploring deep sea cuisine and come up empty. A lot of rich folks out there paying stupid money for seafood. Some secret food scene I'm not aware of?

Being a deep water fish, will have the delicate taste of urine, probably. Nom, nom. Delicious.

Lophius is pretty good. White, medium soft flesh, without any particular strong flavor. Is a bottom fish so there is not a hint of ammonia. The chicken of the sea. Sadly over-fished currently.

Some people still seem to thing that when we finish with the edible species inhabiting the platform and sea surface we will have plenty of fish in the deep sea, but it does not work like that. They will be disappointed.

Have you tried Orange Roughy[1] Its a deep water fish and one of the nicest tasting fish imho. I stopped eating it some years ago, it was the poster child for unsustainable fishing but seems to have recovered somewhat now (though after some more reading this seems disputed).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_roughy

It looks like something out of a Tool video.

Weird.

it must have some sort of bioluminescent as well?

Looks like it has a spotlight on just its head but when it turns away the "lit up area" stays exactly the same..

I think that's just a combination of a very bright external light, a transparent head, and a semi-reflective surface beneath the transparent tissue (it looks like what I imagine a transparent beach ball with some reflective stripes and some organs inside would look like if underwater and a bright light is shone on it).

I don't know how literal "glowing" is meant here.

> its eyes are two glowing green orbs behind its face

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