MMM. so I had to do a myctophid, or a lanternfish, for my fish calendar.
These guys are mesopelagic (basically, deep sea for anyone who isn’t a biologist) fish that live in the “twilight zone” during the day, hiding from predators, but come up to the surface to feed at night (This is called diel vertical migration, lots of mesopelagic animals do this). So we would be up at 2 am collecting these little guys. That’s me on the deck of the ship sorting through our plankton haul looking for myctophids, plastic, and other things.
They are thought to be one of the most abundant fish in the ocean, since the open ocean is huge, and because of this, I was able to dissect a bunch of these guys and look for plastic in their stomachs (We were working in the north pacific garbage patch). Over 30% of these guys had eaten some form of mono-filament fishing line.
And yes, they do have bioluminescent photophores.
