teenyfish

[teenyfish]

Well it’s been a minute since I posted on here--I’ve been busy visiting my family back in Virginia for three weeks, and before that I was taking care of fish and working on pet portrait commissions for the holidays.  

Hoping to post some non-digital art soon.

Here are some of my favorites from the pet portraits I’ve done this year. 

#my art #my artwork #commssion #commission art #illustrative art

[teenyfish]

Brine would taste…brine-y. Super salty. You’d be fine.

Speaking of which I need to go hatch some brine shrimp for the baby flounder I have coming in next week. FYI they are just sea monkeys.

[teenyfish]

But like what’s the point of going to get your masters or PhD in marine bio if you can’t name animals the silliest names you can think of.

Babe, wake up. New benefit to being a marine biologist just dropped!

[teenyfish]

This is so creepy and beautiful

Mother Whale's Funeral

[teenyfish]

Yah

oh! oh oh oh. i never showed ya’ll how big a blue whale skull is, hold on

[teenyfish]

Well I, a late-to-the game post-tumblr-collapse millennial managed to get 200 followers/mutuals and to celebrate and say thank you I’m giving you some cursed fish from my fish art collection.  Whenever I get my art reblogged it makes my day ya’ll.

Top left - Myctophidae or Lanternfish

Top right - Coelacanth

Bottom Left - Greenland Shark + parasitic eyeball copepod

Bottom Right - Humpback Anglerfish + lanternfish prey 

#my art #thanks everybody #ya'll are great #cursed fish #lanternfish #coelacanth #greenland shark #anglerfish #illustrative art

[teenyfish]

Sometimes this scene will pop into my head and I can’t stop thinking about how I need stanley tucci to be my dad

[teenyfish]

😳

[teenyfish]

lol does this mean lions mane jellies are eldrich horrors? 10/10

The worst ones to me are sea nettles though.  Make me break out in hives like a mother.  June and July are my least favorite field sampling periods because you can not escape the stingers.  

[teenyfish]

HA!  @cantankerouscanuck I love how you think of me first.  Absolutely the way all shark biologists think, and I’m on that boat to.  If you get bit by a shark, you are in their habitat, it’s on you boo boo.  If you die? Absolutely it’s an awful tragedy, but it’s not going to be made better by hunting down that shark (and you will probably kill a lot of “innocent” sharks in the process because how do you know what shark it was).  

Personally, I don’t study any particularly misunderstood species, but I study a lot of non-charismatic animals (i.e. not a beautiful large mammal, bird, or fish that has behavior that we can project on) that often are significantly more important to the ecosystems they inhabit than the charismatic predators because they are at the base of the food chain and support everything else above them (I study shrimp and juvenile fishes mostly).   Juvenile fish research is also important because they will eventually recruit to large adult populations of fish that we rely on as food resources (and the large charismatic animals do as well). 

I might be a little biased but I’m honestly starting to believe that there’s no purer form of love than the defensive spite you see from biologists that have devoted their life to the study of a maligned or misunderstood species. For example:

The hyena biologist that arranged for Disney animators to come sketch captive  hyenas for The Lion King film (Laurence Frank) was so incensed when the animals were depicted as villains in the movie that he later included boycotting the film on a list of ways the average person could help hyena conservation.

Though it’s commonly known that Charles Darwin’s distaste for parasitic wasps played a role in his development of evolution theory (since he felt no loving God would create animals with such a disturbing life cycle), the biologists who study these wasps find it an unfair characterization. When they were tasked with coming up with a common name for the family of parasitic wasps (Ichneumonidae) that old Charles so disliked, they proposed the name “Darwin Wasps” to spite the famous naturalist who had insulted their beloved family of insects.

Parasitologist Tommy Leung was so frustrated with the way people write about parasites to evoke horror and gore that he started writing a Parasite of the Day blog, that specifically avoids inflammatory or unsettling language to describe them. He also illustrates different species in colorful anime art on Twitter in a series called Parasite Monster Girls—which he calls his “love letter to parasites.”

I guess I’m just saying that if you’re a biologist studying an unpopular species and you have a little bit of a chip on your shoulder about it you can always count on me to be in your corner if you want to get a little petty with the public!

[teenyfish]

this is what I’m talking about.  Real southern rednecks.  The kind that started a sport because they were building fast cars to bootleg and run away from cops.  The kind that were big union men pushing back against corrupt capitalism and had more in common with socialist ideals.  The rednecks who recognize that rural communities benefit more from cooperation among themselves than isolation, even with those different from you.  The kind that hunt for subsistence (not sport) and recognize that the land is changing and that you should eat what you kill.

I’m certainty not saying that all southern rednecks were like this, weren’t racist or bigoted, but a lot of them had their roots here, and were more rebels against the norm than anything else, and certainly didn’t like the police.  What I am saying are that these middle class white suburban families with salt life/browning stickers, listen to Luke Bryant clone country pop, watch modern NASCAR without knowing or understanding it’s history, and worship the cops are not rednecks.  Don’t let them tell you otherwise.  They are posers.  Thanks NASCAR for sticking to your roots.

#in defense of (some) of the south #rant #southern liberal

[teenyfish]

gosh i wish i was this comfortable with color theory to paint like this. 

Anastasia Trusova on Instagram

[teenyfish]

thanks @cantankerouscanuck for feeding into my cave claustrophobia fear.  If you want to know what this is about, listen to the Mother Nature Will Kill You podcast here.  New episode is up next Monday. 

May I present to you the antithesis to “there are many benefits to being a marine biologist.” The sad rock crew.

[teenyfish]

thats the weirdest looking sea robin I’ve ever seen.

We used to catch northern sea robin all the time in the Chesapeake Bay.  They looked much more cute/pretty.  They still do be walkin’ around on their fingers though. The fingers/feet are just modified fin rays from their pectoral fins that have evolved into fingers that move around separately to the fin. Pretty dope.

Do u guys think at the bottom of the ocean there are fish with feet 2 walk on it?

[teenyfish]

OMG THIS THIS THIS. THIS IS MY BIOLOGIST HOT TAKE.  Was just talking about this with my husband.  This is why PETA pisses me off (besides like everything else that the do as well) because they get mad when you cull animals like wild boars which are destroying natural ecological habitat necessary for native species to survive.  Or to keep invasive catfish or lionfish from eating all of the native species we have.  The name of the game in biology right now is conserving what we still DO have, and increasing biodiversity as it results in higher resilience for these ecosystems to bounce back from natural disasters like hurricanes and fires.  So if we have to get rid of some invasive, that’s no sweat off our backs so we can protect native animals and plants.  

I will say though, if you CAN find a wildlife rehabber, go for it, but yes, rehabbing is hard and often done on the rehabber’s own time.  I got to see the good side of this while working at a zoo/aquarium that almost exclusively took in un-releasable wildlife, but we were a larger facility that could handle it. 

Hunting and fishing are good and important when done correctly and informed with scientific research, especially because we have eliminated most if not all apex predators on every continent except for Africa, and those predators were extremely important in keeping ecological balance (see the Yellowstone or Isle Royal wolves for example).  And subsistence fishing and hunting (i.e. ecologically RESPONSABLE recreational hunting and fishing, not trophy stuff) is an important way for humans to connect with nature and their own roots.   Also, you don’t want to see a deer with chronic wasting disease. It’s a bad time. 

A frustrating part of the mainstream vegan “love all animals and protect the environment” mindset is the fact that things need to die in real-life ecology all the time but deer hunting season makes icky feelings and carp culls aren’t cottagecore

[teenyfish]

Mangroves are my favorite coastal habitat. Sunken forest with sharks and sponges and clear water? Tropical maze of wonders? Yes please.

Its time for a fresh start *wakes up in a mangrove*

[teenyfish]

I feel targeted.

if I was rich i would absolutely go all out weird. commission books handwritten in a made up language. erect strange black spires in the wood. buy a boat, make it look like a perfect copy of one that was used in an 18th century antarctic expedition, and then let it drift to shore miles away. i want every interaction with me to leave people with a sense of impending cosmic horror.