A number of Japanese citizens living in the Ishikawa Prefecture have made some strange observations during the last few days.

Nanao, Japan, June 4

During the evening of June 4, a man suddenly heard a plopping sound in a parking lot of the Nakajima citizens centre in Nanao. When he looked back, he was surprised to see tadpoles scattered over a car and on the ground. According to Kiwamu Funakura, 36, an official at the centre who went to the parking lot at the time, about 100 tadpoles, each 2 or 3 centimetres long, were scattered over an area measuring about 200 square meters.

Hakusan, Japan, June 6

Two days later and roughly 70 kilometres southwest of Nanao, a similar event occurred in another parking lot. In the morning of June 6, between 20 and 30 dead tadpoles were found on a car windshield and other places in a Hakusan parking lot, with some reportedly having lost their original shape.

Nanao, Japan, June 8

Back in Nano, Takeshi Kakiuchi, 62, a member of the Nanao Municipal Assembly, found six tadpoles on his car and on the ground around his home Monday morning. Kakiuchi’s home is located roughly 4 km from the Nakajima citizens centre.

Nakanotomachi, Japan, June 9

On Tuesday evening, Yukio Oumi, 78, found 13 fish on the back of his truck and on the ground around his home in Nakanotomachi. The fish are believed to be crucian carps, each measuring about 3 centimetres.

Fish and frogs falling from the sky?

The reason behind the strange events has not yet been determined, and the Kanazawa Local Meteorological Observatory says it has no information that any tornadoes occurred on the days when the animals appeared.

Susumu Aiba, professor at the Kanazawa Institute of Technology, says that small-scale wind gusts may have swept over limited areas, swirling up water and any creatures living in it. If the gusts were small enough, they may have been able to avoid meteorological detection.

Another suggestion comes from Kimimasa Tokikuni, the head of the Ishikawa prefectural branch of the Japanese Society for Preservation of Birds. “Birds such as herons or umineko that had these tadpoles in their mouths or gorges might have dropped them because they were startled by something while flying,” he says. All the places where animals seem to have fallen from the sky during the last few days are located in close vicinity to flooded rice paddies, so birds may have caught tadpoles and small fish there in an attempt to feed their young. Herons and other water fowl are in the middle of their breeding period right now.

A rare orange-and-yellow lobster has been found off the coast of Prince Edward Island in Canada. Instead of the drab colours normally sported by lobsters, this female specimen boosts a spotted orange-and-yellow pattern. According to specialists, she’s one in about 30 million.

The colourful lobster is currently housed with roughly 100 other lobsters at Arnold’s Lobster and Clam Bar in Eastham, whose owner Nathan “Nick” Nickerson has named her “Fiona” after his girlfriend’s granddaughter. Getting a name is not the only special treatment she’s been awarded; unlike the other inhabitants of the tank her claws are not bound with rubber bands and she can therefore keep her house mates at bay. Lobsters can be cannibalistic, especially in crowded environments, but Nickerson says Fiona is “not very aggressive.”
Arnold’s Lobster and Clam Bar has not put the rare orange-and-yellow lobster on the menu.

“Gosh no!” Nickerson said. “That would be like steaming a Rembrandt.”

Instead, Fiona has gotten used to fine dining at Arnold’s – she’s kept on a diet of Yellowfin tuna of sushi quality while the other lobsters have to make do with cod fish. Nickerson plans on continuing to pamper her for a while before donating her to the Cape Cod Museum of Natural History in Brewster or to the New England Aquarium.

Nickerson received Fiona as a gift from his fried Michael R. Gagne, sales manager at Ipswich Shellfish Company Inc. who says Fiona is a “once-in-a-lifetime lobster”.

1According to Michael F. Tlusty, director of research at the New England Aquarium, Fiona’s distinctive coloration is caused by a rare genetic mutation. He estimated she might be 7 years old based on her weight, but how she managed to survive for so many years in her eye-catching garb is a true mystery.

“If you’re swimming over a muddy bottom, it would be much easier to see a yellow lobster than a normal-colored lobster,” said Tlusty, who has been studying lobsters for 10 years.

“Why was she able to survive with her coloration?” Tlusty asked. “That’s something we’re not quite sure of.”

As reported earlier, an ill-fated eel somehow ended up in the butt of an allegedly constipated Chinese gentleman. Two European fish experts have now taken a closer look at a photograph of the eel in question and given their expert opinion on its identity.

When discussing the fish-in-butt incident with Swedish ichthyologist Dr Sven Kullander, Dr Ralf Britz of London’s Natural History Museum – an expert on the order Synbranchiformes – suggested that this fish might not be an eel at all. Instead, he believes the elongated fish to be a member of the species Monopterus albus, since the tip of its tail is very slender and the gular region somewhat inflated.

Despite not being a true eel, Monopterus albus is commonly known as Asian swamp eel in English. It is a popular food fish in parts of south-east Asia and you can buy it alive in fish markets. All young swamp eels are female but some of the change sex and become male as they age. If a male swamp eel founds itself in an environment with no or very few females, he can change himself back into a female fish again. The change from one sex to the other can take up to a year.

If you ever feel the need to insert a swamp eel into your body, we here at AC Tropical Fish suggest you do it orally.

Swamp Eel Chowder
4 servings

Ingredients
Ruhgly 600 g Monopterus albus
150 g Lean Pork
50 g Dry Black Fungus
5 pieces of Dry Black Mushroom
3 tbsp cooking oil
1 tbsp Shaoxing Wine
1 L Chicken Stock
2 tbsp Shredded Lemon Leaves
1 tbsp Shredded Ginger
1 tbsp Chopped Parsley

Ingredients for seasoning
3 tbsp Water Chestnut Powder
1 tbsp Water
1 tbsp Sesame Oil
1/2 tbsp Dark Soy Sauce
1/2 tbsp Light Soy Sauce
1/2 tbsp Salt
1 tsp pepper

Instructions
1.) Prepare the seasoning by stirring all seasoning ingredients together. Set aside.
2.) Remove the bones from the eel.
3.) Wash the eel meat in hot water and shred it.
4.) Let the black fungus and black mushrooms soak in water until they become soft.
5.) Shred the black fungus and black mushrooms.
6.) Clean the pork and shred it.
7.) Heat up a wok or large frying pan and add the cooking oil.
8.) Add the eel meat to the wok and stir fry.
9.) Add wine and chicken stock and bring to a boil.
10.) Add the shredded fungus, mushrooms, and pork and cook for 5 minutes while stirring.
11.) Add ginger and parsley and cook at low heat for another 5 minutes while stirring.
12.) Add the seasoning, continue to cook and stir for 2 more minutes.
13.) Sprinkle with chopped parsley before serving.

* If you want to see the low resolution picture of the actual specimen extracted at the Kwong Wah Hospital, the paper where it is included has been published in the journal Surgery. “Siu Fai Lo, Sin Hang Wong, Lok Sang Leung, In Chak Law, Andrew Wai Chun Yip, Traumatic rectal perforation by an eel, Surgery, Volume 135, Issue 1, January 2004, Pages 110-111”.

A company named Ghost Pros is currently exploring the ship wrecks of Florida in search not of gold, silver or precious stones but of ghosts. The company is using the latest underwater ghost-detection technology, including submersible high powered sonar listening devices. Ghost Pro divers have also teamed up with Tampa’s Sea Viewers, the makers of high definition studio cameras which will be used to develop under water rovers.

“We’re listening to everything and anything we can down there,” says Ghost Pros’ Lee Ehrlich, explaining that you have to know what is not a ghost before you can find one. “[…] before you can tell you need to know what that ship sounds like alone,” he says.

Unlike Ghost Busters, Ghost Pros doesn’t get paid to hunt ghosts, but the search does generate a lot of attention from ghost aficionados and ghost critics, as well as from the general media. Hunting for the para-normal has proven to be an excellent way of creating some very normal buzz for Ehrlich and his companions, who – when not hunting down the ghosts of voyages past – are developing advanced submersibles for search and rescue operations.

As a diver, I would like to recommend any readers of this blog to leave the deep sea ghost hunting to professionals like Ehrlich and his crew. If you start seeing ghosts while scuba diving, make a safe ascendance and wait for the nitrogen poisoning to wear off.

As reported earlier this week, Danish television presenter Lisbeth Koelster was put on trial after deliberately pouring diluted anti-dandruff shampoo into a fish tank housing 12 guppies. The aim of the “experiment” was to demonstrate the level of toxic material in the shampoo. After being subjected to the shampoo, all but one of the fishes died and a Danish veterinarian who watched the show decided to press charges.

Koelster had pleaded not guilty, but the Glostrup court found her guilty of violating animal protection laws. Judge Thomas Lohse said Koelster had “deliberately committed an act of cruelty to animals” and violated animal protection laws. She was however not found to have violated any laws regarding experimentation on animals.

Koelster will not have to pay any fine since the event took place in 2004; four and a half year from now. The judge found this amount of time unreasonable and therefore decided not to fine her.

Have you ever tried to keep a seahorse alive in an aquarium only to fail miserably? Well, to add insult to injury, these creatures seem to be much sturdier than previously believed, because how else can you explain the amazing survival of a British seahorse found three miles inland in Weymouth, Dorset?

“I was just popping out to buy a paper and I looked down and saw this funny object by the pathway, said Karen Warr, 46, who discovered the unusual visitor outside her house. I got a bit closer I saw it was a seahorse. They are very distinctive. I did wonder what on earth it was doing there but I could see it was still breathing so I dashed inside and the only thing I could think of to pick it up with was a fish slice. I put it in the bowl I use for my scales and filled it with tepid water. It was still breathing but wasn’t moving much, it must have been in shock.”

How long the seahorse had been lying on the ground gasping for air is unknown, but Warr put her cat out three hours earlier; a cat fond of eating creatures from the sea. “’It couldn’t have been there then otherwise he would have eaten it”, Warr explained.

After saving the seahorse from suffocation, dehydration and the possible return of the hungry cat, Warr made a call to the nearest Sealife Centre. “I called the Sea Life Centre because they are only down the road and somebody came out to see me.”

The resilient seahorse, an adult female who has been given the name Pegasus, is now recuperating from her adventures in a dark quarantine aquarium at the Sea Life Centre where she is gradually being acclimatized back to saline conditions.

“They can go into shock if they are not treated carefully”, says Display supervisor Claire Little. “She seems fine now but we will continue to monitor her while she is in quarantine for the next 28 days. She has been quite lucky. They are fairly hardy creatures but it was obviously just very good fortune that she was found straight away and we were called.”

Exactly how a seahorse ended up three mile inland remains a mystery, but Warr and Little both agree that it was most likely dropped by a seagull.

According to the journal Surgery, a 50 cm (20 in) eel was removed from a man’s rectum at the Kwong Wah Hospital in Kowloon, Hong Kong.

The 50-year old man was admitted to the Accident and Emergency Department complaining about abdominal pain.

European Eel – Picture by Ron Offermans; GNU

Doctors diagnosed him with peritonitis, inflammation of the peritoneum*, and did an x-ray to find out the underlying cause. Interestingly enough, what they saw on the x-ray was an eel stuck inside the man’s rectum.

The eel was still alive and biting the patient’s splenic flexure, which is a sharp bend located between the transverse and the descending colon. Doctors also found a 3 cm perforation over the anterior wall of the rectum.

“On further questioning,” says the paper, “the patient admitted an eel was inserted into the rectum in an attempt to relieve constipation. This may be related to a bizarre healthcare belief, inadvertent sexual behaviour, or criminal assault. However, the true reason may never be known.”

The patient was released from hospital a week later. We have been unable to find any information about what happened to the eel.

* The peritoneum is a serous membrane that forms the lining of the abdominal cavity or the coelom.

In Australia, a live shark was dumped on the doorstep of The Standard’s Raglan Parade office in Warrnambool shortly after midnight on April 22.

Fortunately for the shark, a local resident passed by, saw the shark, and alerted the police.

“I’d just come out of McDonald’s and there was another gentleman there and he told me there was a shark on the doorstep,” the man said to the Standard. “I thought he must have been drunk . . . but I put a spotlight on it and the shark was just sitting there perfectly still and you could see its gills going.“

Since the man didn’t have a phone with him, he drove to the police station, hoping someone there would believe him.

“I said to the policewoman at the counter: ‘I’m not sure how to explain this but there’s a shark on the front door of The Standard and it’s still alive’ and she said ‘what?’. It’s not something you hear about every day.“

The man said he drove home and told his girlfriend, who didn’t believe him. To convince her, he took her to The Standard’s front door where they found police officers busy pouring water over the poor shark to keep it alive.

The officers responsible for saving the shark and bringing it back to sea were Constable Jarrod Dwyer and Acting Sergeant Greg Cresell who, after pouring water over the animal, loaded it into their divvy van and transported their unusual passenger to the ocean.

“I nursed it on the front seat (of the divvy van) and we took it to the breakwater and put it back in the water near the boat ramp,” Constable Dwyer said. “It was literally right on the doorstep of The Standard.” He said the shark swam off when placed in the breakwater.

Acting Sergeant Cresell said it was one of the most bizarre incidents he’d come across in his time as a police officer.

“We’ve had some strange things in the van before but never a shark,” he said. “We wanted to save it and the longer it was out of the water the worse it was for it.”

The approximately 60 cm long fish has been identified as a Port Jackson shark by Ian Westhorpe, senior fisheries officer with the Department of Primary Industries. The Port Jackson shark is a common southern species but not often taken on a hook.

Not returning a fish to the water if you don’t intend to keep it is an offence, Westhorpe explained, and it will usually result in an on-the-spot fine.

“These laws are there to encourage the humane handling of fish,” Westhorpe said.

He also added that a Port Jackson shark isn’t dangerous to humans, except for the two venomous dorsal spines located near the dorsal fins.

Warrnambool police are investigating the incident and wish to speak with anyone with information.

The remains of a 15 meter[1] long sea living predator has been found in Svalbard, an archipelago located about midway between mainland Norway and the North Pole. The animal, a species of pliosaur dubbed Predator X by the group of scientists who discovered it, lived in the ocean 147 million years ago during the Jurassic period.

Predator X hunting (Photo: Atlantic Productions)

The skull of Predator X is twice as big as the skull of a Tyrannosaurus Rex and researchers believe the jaws of this hunter could exert a pressure of 15 tonnes[2]. The weight of the live animal is estimated to be around 45 tonnes[3].

“It is the largest sea dwelling animal ever found and as far as we know it is an entirely new species”, says palaeontologist Espen Madsen Knutsen[4] from the Olso University in Norway to Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter.

Knutsen is a part of the research team who dug out the skull and backbone of the creature during a two week long research expedition to Svalbard in June 2008. The remains were first discovered by Professor Jörn Hurum[5] from the Natural History Museum at Oslo University in 2007. Hurum noticed a piece of bone sticking up from the permafrost, but since it was the last day of the 2007 expedition the group was forced to leave the bone behind without any further investigation after having jotted down its GPS position.

Parts of the head and backbone was dug out during the abovementioned June 2008 expedition and together with an earlier find of a smaller specimen of the same species located just a few kilometres away, scientists have now managed to map together a good picture of what the live animal once looked like.

“We haven’t unearthed a high number of parts yet, but the parts that we do have are important ones and this has made it possible for us to create an image of what Predator X once looked like”, says Knutsen.

The digg site (Photo: Atlantic Productions)

In the excavated area, palaeontologist have found roughly 20,000 bone fragments – the remains of at least 40 different sea dwelling Jurassic animals. Once you’ve started digging in this region, it is fairly easy to spot the bones since their pale colour contrasts sharply against the black earth of the Svalbard tundra. The main difficulty is instead the short dig period and the fact that much time is spent restoring the excavated area after each dig.

“Each time we leave a dig site we have to restore the area. There can be no traces of our activities. This forces us to use half of our time digging up the same spot all over again when we return”, Kutsen explains.

Svalbard lies far north of the Arctic Circle and the average summer temperature is no more than 5°C (41°F), while the average winter temperature is a freezing −12 °C (10 °F). In Longyearbyen, the largest Svalbard settlement, the polar night lasts from October 26 to February 15. From November 12 to the end of January there is civil polar night, a continuous period without any twilight bright enough to permit outdoor activities without artificial light.

The team plans to return to Svalbard this summer to carry out more digging. They hope to find another specimen in order to make the skeleton more complete, and they also wish to unearth the remains of other animals that inhabited Svalbard at the same time as Predator X.

If you wish to learn more, you can look forward to the documentary shot by Atlantic Productions during the Svalbard excavations. The name of the documentary will be Predator X and the animal is actually named after the film, not the other way around. The film will be screened on History in the USA in May, Britain, Norway and across Europe later this year and distributed by BBC Worldwide.

Pliosaur crushing down on Plesiosaur with 33,000lb bite force (Ill.: Atlantic Productions)

All the scientific results will be published in a full scientific paper later this year.

You can find more Predator X information (in English) at the Natural History Museum, University of Oslo: http://www.nhm.uio.no/pliosaurus/english/

No, this fish is not animated by Pixar – it is a very real fish created by Mother Nature deep down in the ocean. Its name is Macropinna microstoma and it has puzzled ichthyologists since it was first described by Chapman in 1939.

Macropinna microstoma, also known as the Barreleye fish, has a fluid-filled dome on its head through which the lenses of its barrel shaped eyes can be clearly seen. The fish lives at a dept of 600-800 metres where it spends most of its time hanging almost completely still in the water.

Even though the Barreleye was described by science in the late 1930s, the transparent dome is a fairly new discovered since it is normally destroyed when the fish is brought up from the deep. Old drawings of the fish do not show the see-through part of the head and the species was not photographed alive until 2004.

Thanks to new technology, it is now possible for researchers to explore the deep sea much more efficiently than ever before and we are therefore learning more and more about the weird and wonderful creatures that inhabit these baffling parts of the planet. It has long been known that the tubular eyes of the Barreleye are good at collecting light; an adaptation to a life deep down in the ocean where light is scarce. The eyes were however presumed to be fixed and the fish was therefore believed to have a very narrow upwards-facing tunnel-vision. Researchers Bruce Robinson and Kim Reisenbichler from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) has now changed this notion completely by providing evidence suggesting that this fish can rotate its eyes within the transparent dome in order to see both upwards and straight forward. Robinson and Reisenbichler observed that when suitable prey, e.g. a jellyfish, is spotted, the fish will rotate its eyes to face forward as it turns its body from a horizontal to a vertical position to feed.

Robinson and Reisenbichler were able to get close to five living Barreleyes using Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs) at a depth of 600-800 meters off the coast of Central California. In addition to observing and filming the fish in its native habitat, the researchers also captured two specimens and placed them in an aquarium for a few hours in order to study them more closely.

Live specimens of Macropinna microstoma turned out to have beautifully coloured green eyes; probably in order to filter out sunlight from the surface of the ocean since this would make it easier for the fish to spot bioluminescent jellyfish. Robinson also suggests that Macropinna microstoma might be using its supreme eye sight to steal food from siphonophores[1].

If you want to know more about the intriguing Barreleye fish, check out the paper BH Robison and KR Reisenbichler (2008) – Macropinna microstoma and the paradox of its tubular eyes. Copeia[2]. 2008, No. 4, December 18, 2008.