Marine biology nerd reacts to Wuthering Waves fishing minigame! Part 1
Hi, I have a BA in biology with an unofficial specialization in marine bio (my college didn't offer anything more specific) so I love everything that has to do with sea critters, and since my enthusiasm about salps got positive reception, I would love to yap about some fun facts relevant to the obtainable fish present in the new fishing minigame in Wuthering Waves 🐟🌊
We're going to start with the...
The fried egg jellyfish in Wuthering Waves looks like a pretty out-of-pocket design, but fried egg jellies are, in fact, real animals!
Sharing this photo again of one I took near a body of water in my region -- they do legitimately look like fried eggs. 😂 They belong to the genus Phacellophora and are found in most of the world's oceans. (Not to be confused with Cotylorhiza tuberculata, which is also called the "fried egg jellyfish" but is a different species.)
I'm not sure if it varies by region, but where I live, the best time to see them is between mid-July and mid-August, when they appear in droves -- so I see them often enough that I was positively ticked to see them featured in Wuthering Waves essentially unaltered. The caveat would be the note about them purportedly tasting like fried eggs; while some species of jellyfish are indeed edible when prepared properly, I'm not sure about this one specifically, so I can't say I endorse trying -- and even if they are, they probably don't taste like eggs, as jellyfish supposedly bears little to no flavor.
I'm going to guess this one is a play on the real animal called the ribbon eel, which is indeed quite colorful, but not necessarily found in large knots. Apparently, while they don't do so well in captivity, they can live for up to twenty years in the wild! (So, depending on who all is reading this... there might be ribbon eels out there that are your age or older. 👀)
Many of us might be familiar with the infamous, meme-worthy photo of the "blobfish" on which this critter is quite clearly based. However, did you know that said photograph does not accurately portray what blobfish usually look like?
Blobfish live on the seabed at depths of up to over nine thousand (!!!) feet; to maintain their integrity against the immense pressure at that depth, the blobfish's soft tissues are full of water and fat. So if a blobfish were to get caught in a net and very abruptly moved to sea level, where the pressure is much lower, its "water-logged" tissues effectively explode, giving it the unnatural "blob" appearance featured in the infamous photo.
(Image from NOAA, in the public domain)
This is a real blob sculpin shown in its natural habitat -- and in a much more fish-shaped state! Moreover, unlike the in-game Sob Blob, blobfish don't have a lot of natural predators and can get away with a rather sedentary lifestyle in which they remain largely stationary unless it's absolutely necessary for them to move. Moisturized, unbothered, flourishing.
And, saving probably my favorite featured critter of the bunch for last:
Salps are much less well-known critters than any of the ones I've described so far, I think! Aside from in Wuthering Waves, I've only ever heard mention of them in the 2007 video game Endless Ocean (of which I was also a huge fan back when I had a Wii). I would say they're not prominent in popular culture by any stretch of the imagination, as far as I'm aware.
Salps are tunicates, a type of marine invertebrate that is nevertheless part of the phylum Chordata that includes all vertebrates, as tunicates possess notochords (the embryonic precursor to the vertebral column), as well as other chordate features, in their larval stage. In this case, the in-game description is at least partially accurate, as salps are a key component of the marine ecosystem and are thought to be a food source for a great many other animals, including fish and seabirds -- though it's difficult to tell exactly which ones, since they're gelatinous and don't leave behind much evidence of being eaten in their predators' digestive tracts. They're also purportedly one of the fastest-growing multicellular animals in the world.
Their life cycle involves an alternation between solitary and "chain" phases depending on the generation. While the salps' in-game entry describes them as sometimes "too small to bother with," IRL the biggest salp colonies can literally grow to lengths of one hundred feet!
That's about all I have time for today! I've got more critters I can talk about, so be sure to let me know if you're interested in a part two 😉
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