[SEMCO] Pearlside Story: A Call for Citizen Science and the Value of Published Observations

[Teresa Izzo]

[cid:image001.jpg at 01D5536C.B51A9810]

PRESS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                                                 FOR MORE INFORMATION, CONTACT:
August 15, 2019                                                                                                             Teresa Izzo
  508-896-3867 ext. 137
tizzo at ccmnh.org

The Cape Cod Museum of Natural History
presents
Pearlside Story: A Call for Citizen Science and the Value of Published Observations
with
Owen Nichols
BREWSTER, MA —The Cape Cod Museum of Natural History in Brewster presents Pearlside Story: A Call for Citizen Science and the Value of Published Observations with Owen Nichols, Director of Marine Fisheries Research at the Center for Coastal Studies in Provincetown Saturday, September 14, 2019 at 1pm.

Owen Nichols and his partner, researcher and environmental educator Tasia Blough, were walking on Coast Guard Beach in Eastham, MA when Tasia discovered a tiny, lifeless silver fish among the rocks and wrack line. She quickly recognized it as a deep ocean fish covered with light organs, and despite searching for another hour, they only found the single specimen.

When they returned home, they used an ultraviolet light to examine the fish, revealing the exquisite detail of its bioluminescent light organs. Owen identified the fish as a pearlside (Maurolicus sp.), a mesopelagic fish covered in photophores (light organs) that is fairly well known offshore in deeper water, but of which there are only a few published records from the coast. A social media post of the discovery circulated widely, leading to regional media coverage, which in turn led to several other reports of the species from local beachcombers and naturalists. While these beach-cast records are a small contribution to our knowledge of the distributional ecology of the species, they highlight the need for citizen science and published observations.

 Owen Nichols is Director of Marine Fisheries Research at the Center for Coastal Studies in Provincetown, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Massachusetts - Dartmouth School for Marine Science and Technology, a guest investigator at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and an adjunct professor at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy and the Shoals Marine Laboratory.

Free with Museum Admission
For more information please call: 508-896-3867, ext. 133

[cid:image002.jpg at 01D5536C.B51A9810]

[cid:image003.jpg at 01D5536C.B51A9810]







Teresa Izzo
Program Coordinator/Publicist
Cape Cod Museum of Natural History
869 Main Street/Route 6A
Brewster, MA 02631
508-896-3867 x 137
508-896-8844 -fax

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.whoi.edu/pipermail/semco/attachments/20190815/ae6a7299/attachment.htm 
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image001.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 55888 bytes
Desc: image001.jpg
Url : http://mailman.whoi.edu/pipermail/semco/attachments/20190815/ae6a7299/image001.jpg 
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image002.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 10243 bytes
Desc: image002.jpg
Url : http://mailman.whoi.edu/pipermail/semco/attachments/20190815/ae6a7299/image002.jpg 
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image003.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 29121 bytes
Desc: image003.jpg
Url : http://mailman.whoi.edu/pipermail/semco/attachments/20190815/ae6a7299/image003.jpg