• Question: What is the most interesting fish you have ever researched?

    Asked by elmocho to Clare, Dave, Glo, Ozge, Sean on 20 Jun 2011. This question was also asked by lilybieber.
    • Photo: Clare Woulds

      Clare Woulds answered on 17 Jun 2011:

      I’m afraid I don’t work on fish, I just find them interesting to look at.

    • Photo: Gloeta Massie

      Gloeta Massie answered on 18 Jun 2011:

      In terms of fish that I’ve worked on hands-on – anchovies. Really crazy, beautiful little fish. Seriously stupid, but simultaneously brilliant at what they do. In terms of fish that I’ve read up about (but not experimented with) – angler fish. The have some crazy reproductive systems!

    • Photo: Dave Sproson

      Dave Sproson answered on 19 Jun 2011:

      Like Clare I don’t actually work with fish – I’m more interested in the physics of the ocean and the atmosphere.

    • Photo: Ozge Ozkaya

      Ozge Ozkaya answered on 20 Jun 2011:

      I don’t work on fish now either but I did in the past, in fact my PhD was using zebrafish as a model to study development! So I can tell you a bit about these. They are really amazing, they are not marine though they are originally from the Ganges river but are now a genetic model. The whole genome is sequenced and we already know what a lot of the genes do. They are vertebrates like you and me (i.e. they have a backbone) so many of the biological processes are common between them and us. They can lay a huge number of eggs and the embryos are completely transparent for the first 24 hours, so you can see everything happening, the heart beating, the blood flowing, you can also label the cells with fluorescent dyes for instance and follow them through development. So very cool fish indeed 🙂

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