SEA DEVILS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20958, 22 February 1930, Page 22

SEA DEVILS.

LURING MONSTERS WITH RADIUM,

_ Jet black whales with headlights to show them the way in the darkness a m - ? l ™* er ocean’s surface, great fish with batteries M discharging violet rays downward while their eyes peer straight up, and fish with grappling hooks attached to the mouth,, are among the monsters of the deep captured during the summer months by Dr William Beebe, famous American naturalist, director of the Bermuda oceanographic expedition of the New York Zoological Society, off Nonsuch Island.

Modern science and mechanics were drawn on to the fullest extent during this expedition, which has accomplished unexpected results. Hundreds of varieties of deep-water fish, including scores of specimens heretofore unknown and unclassified, were captured at the direction of Dr Beebe. .

Some of the most difficult problems of the expedition were the extraordinary and fantastic forma of some of the deep sea devils. _ Until this expedition only two fish with lighting apparatus were known, and these were shore fish from the East Indies. These two both had a sue or bag below the eyes containing what was supposed to be a mass of luminous bacteria. , One specimen was fitted with a film or black pigment which it could draw up over the light. But now, as a result of Dr Beebe’s most recent triumphs, many deep-sea fish with electric lighting apparatus are known, indicating that fish had outdone man by ages in developing lighting. Some of Dr Beebe’s specimens of the so-called electric fish were found 500 fathoms (3000 feetV under the surface, where all living creatures are accustomed to constant blackness.

One jet black whale was captured which had a headlight rising like a periscope from; the- top of its head and casting a brilliant beam of light forward in the darkness. Another variety of-fish was found with the ability to discharge violet; lights downward from its body. This is the young _Argyropelicus, or silver hatchet fish. Scientists are making an exhaustive study of these fish to determine in detail the means of emanating these light rays. 1 , At one time a rare fish was found in Icelandic waters. It had two flaps of skin attached to two parts of its body without apparent design. Inside the skin flap was only one organ. This specimen was a female sortie two feet in length, and the male of the species was never found. But now Dr Beebe has discovered tbe young of both sexes—an extremely* remarkable catch. Both the male and' female are perfect in form and miniatures of the full-sized fish. The male captured by the Beebe expedition has a fierce array of small grappling hooks attached to the mouth.

One of the rays taken on the expedition is of the spotted eagles variety, which has_ an intensely poisonous spine./ This ray comes from an interesting family which includes the electric ray, or torpedo. This ray has inany of the properties of an electric battery. By some marvellous means it has produced electric cells from the muscles of its body, which enable it to stun and kill a fish.

The electricity from this fish will decompose water and actually produce a spark. How the electric power of the ray affects other fish may be indicated by the fact that an electric ray which was captured and opened contained a two-pound eel and a one-pound flounder. Other rays have been found containing four-pound fish in their stomachs.

: The electric apparatus is made up of two sets of tiny hexagonal cells, some 409 to the set. at the base of the pectoral fins.

One of the new devices utilised by these scientific deep sea fishermen was a radium lure. The radium was used as a luminous coating on' hooks attached to sounding wires about a mile long in depths where there is no daylight. Perhaps no fisherman has ever had a thrill such as that experienced when there was a “nibble" on this lighted hook, and the first catch was raised, a squid, which is a member of the octopus family. Dr Beebe said that so far as he was aware, radium lighted fish hooks had never been used before. The glow-hooks he uses are nearly a foot long, and he hoped to catch some unusually gigantic deep-sea monster. That there are amazingly huge creatures of the deep has been indicated by the presence of huge scales in nets lowered into the blackness—but the nets have never been strong enough to hold the deep-sea devils. One of Dr Beebe’s chief troubles was that his field oi research off JTonsuch Island, Bermuda, was too rich. Durine his expedition he for as a rule modern expeditions of the kind find little that is absolutely new and are devoted to a more accurate study of what is a’/viiily known. But Dr Beebe and otli-V ■ Members of Ins expedition found about as much that was new as that which was old.

, Dr Bcebe used tbe same method of intensified study that he utilised in his scientific work in the jungle, and this is the first time in the history of science that a single spot in the ocean has been studied so thoroughly. The Beebe expedition is one of the most completely equipped ever to undertake such a study of under-wator life. The equipment includes many unusual devices such as the luminous fish-hooks mentioned; mile-long wires and cables; specify devised nets with trap mouths designed to close when some of the mile-deep fish stray into into them despite the headlights with which some of the fish are equipped. The paraphernalia includes costly cameras, deep-sea diving equipment, anti laboratories for examination of the fish. When a catch is brought up it is studied by. eminent scientists for classification purposes, examined in the laboratories, preserved, painted from life by artists, revealing as many of its secrets as science can demand.