MANY QUEER FISH

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21769, 7 April 1934, Page 9 (Supplement)

MANY QUEER FISH

ENGLISH CHANNEL INVADED ELECTRIC RAYS AND SHOCKS Queer fish are being caught in the English Channel, all because of the warm summer of last year. One stranger is the torpedo nobiliance and his cousin torpedo marinorata, both better known as electric rays? for they can give one a real electric shock. A specimen caught off Plymouth was four feet long and three feet wide, and carried two " batteries " on its back weighing nine pounds each. A shock from these would cause temporary paralysis of the hands and arms. The Marine Biological Association's aquarium had an electric ray only eighteen inches long which gave a shock of (30 volts.

But the electric ray does not come near land like the weaver fish —another stranger—which derives its name from an old word meaning viper. He is seven inches long and hides under the sand with only the tip of a fin showing, if you step on that a poisoned foot follows' and ammonia is at once necessary.

Sea-horses and octopuses are also among the summer visitors who stayed on. Mr. I). P. Wilson, of the Plymouth Aquarium, said that the sea-horse is a rare visitor. " He is the epicure of the sea," Mr. Wilson added, " for he is the type that examines his food before eating it. When he sees a tasty morsel —a shrimp, or something like that —he swims beside it and looks long at it from all angles before taking a bite. Other fish snap first and think afterward—that is why they get caught on hooks."

The sea-horse is harmless to humans, for he is only an inch and a-half long.