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Master's Monday Blog - Biodiversity of Ichthyoplankton

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Howdy! My name is Corinne Meinert and I am a Master’s student in marine biology at Texas A&M University in Galveston studying biodiversity of ichthyoplankton in the Northern Gulf of Mexico. When you break the word ‘ichthyoplankton’ down you get ‘ichthyo’ which means fish, and ‘plankton’ which means drifter, so all together the word refers to fish eggs and larval fish that drift in the ocean with the currents.  Studying the biodiversity of these little fish is important because it can tell us how healthy the ecosystem is where they live; in general, the higher the diversity of fish, the healthier the ecosystem. 

To give you an idea of how small these fish are, below is a picture of a snake mackerel (Gempylus serpens) on my finger:

b2ap3_thumbnail_snake-mackerel.jpg

In the lab, we use microscopes to visually identify our fish samples to the family level. For some families, such as tunas, billfish, and dolphinfish, we use genetics to identify the fish to species level. Over the past two years, we have collected and identified over 18,000 larval fish and have found a total of 99 different families. The most abundant families we have found are lanternfish (Myctophidae) and jacks (Carangidae), when combined, these two families make up of 25% of our total catch.  Below are a few pictures of different families of fish we have collected (note: the third one is a tuna with another tuna inside of its stomach!):

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We still have a lot to learn about larval fish. Understanding how abundant they are and where they live can help us make better management decisions for the future. If you want to learn more about ichthyoplankton and biodiversity, here are a few good webpages and videos to get started:

Information on ichthyoplankton: https://swfsc.noaa.gov/textblock.aspx?Division=FRD&id=6210

Information on biodiversity: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GK_vRtHJZu4


A compilation of other fish (and one invertebrate!) caught during DEEPEND sampling:

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