Visit the Kelpforest (pt. 2)

The last of a two-week training course for senior volunteers is coming to an end today in our conference room. I can hear applause coming from down the hall occasionally. These are people, retirees and others, who donate large chunks of their time answering questions at fishing areas, assisting folks with licensing and regulation questions, and responding to others who saw a coyote or mountain lion in their backyard. Wardens are freed up to do more important work (like catching poachers), and the public gets a more immediate response instead of being referred from person to person in hopes of finding someone who can answer the question. They are becoming more and more important as wardens are spread thinner and thinner, as positions are eliminated and older people retire. We were talking with the warden in charge of the class and he said he to let him know if we needed volunteers for anything around the office - sometimes when budgets get tight and we can't even buy gas (for nonessential purposes), he can't send them out in the field, and the volunteers help around the office. With this class, he made that a condition of being accepted into the program - previous classes had people who only wanted to be working outdoors. I told him if they didn't mind helping to cut up dead mackerel, sardines and squid, we'd love 'em. In any case, I was glad to see there were a few women in this class.

When out at the docks last week, the same fisherman who gave me the dog-faced witch-eel awhile ago, flagged me down and said he had another fish he had never seen before. He caught it while longlining for thorny heads and sablefish, and saved it for us in his freezer.


We finally got a chance to ID it yesterday. It turns out to be a California slickhead (Alocephalus tenebrosus), an uncommon fish usually found in fairly deep water. Like many deepwater fish, it's almost completely black, although the fisherman said when he first picked it up, some dark blue color came off on his hands.

It's somewhat the worse for wear, since it was frozen for a couple of weeks. One of the diagnostic features for this fish is its flabby, mushy body, which also means it doesn't preserve too well. It was so dark, I adjusted the levels in the picture a little, so it would show up better.


Close up of head.

Gurgled by: señoritafish / 4:37 PM