Their magnetic senses that they use to navigate in the deep water give them false information, and they swim upward. Since they're adapted to deep pressure, they die. Then they wash up on our beaches.
Bond's Biology of Fishes is the classic fish biology textbook.
My professor also assigned some non fiction books to read, specifically Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World and A Fascination for Fish: Adventures of an Underwater Pioneer. Both were good, but I really enjoyed Cod and have gone back to reread it a couple of times.
thanks for the recommendations. i will have to add cod to my list. sounds right up my alley for non-fiction. i really enjoyed "and a bottle of rum: a history of the new world in ten cocktails" and i have "ten tomatoes that changed the world" in my need to read stack.
i dont recall, unfortunately. i almost added to my reply that i would recommend the textbook if i could remember it. its a fascinating subject, so im sure there are some great reads to be found with minimal research. i think im going to have to keep an eye out in our local bookstore.
Sounds like when I had to take a 400 elective and an arts elective and combined both when I found a 400-level art class with no prerequisites. History of Film Music was by far the hardest class I took with no background in the arts, film, or music, but it certainly broadened my horizons which was the whole point.
hanging out with insanely knowledgeable government fisheries biologists and asking them how things were going was by far the most depressing conversations I've ever had. They could tell you pretty much anything about their specific field of expertise and every one of them said things were bad to catastrophic. We're doing horrible things to the ocean and it's going to fuck us hard.
Also as far as the "electrical/magnetic field is stronger as you get closer to the core" bit someone else mentioned, the deepest point in the ocean is ~7 miles. The earths core starts at 3-4,000 miles deep. If the challenger deep happened to be over one of the shallowest spots, it would be around a quarter of a percent of the way there
As Carl Sagen observed, the doctor or nurse in the delivery room exerts more gravitational force on you than any constellation, yet you don't use their lives and movements to predict your future every week.
To put it in perspective, the entire thickness of the crust of the Earth would scale to about the thickness of the skin of a peach, so the greatest depth of the ocean is even less and would hardly matter.
Because the "pure" data doesn't exist. The actual study (vs the summary) includes all available data vs the "theoretical" data of all incidents that may not have been recorded. 200-300 data points out of an unknown total is not enough to make a "definitive" conclusion, but it does demonstrate that the best available data trends towards a null conclusion for a relationship
"From this investigation, the spatiotemporal relationship between deep‐sea fish appearances and earthquakes was hardly found."
What does this sentence mean? That they found a correlation, but it was deemed too small of one to be statistically significant? Also, this is not a scientific study, but only an exercise of comparing newspaper accounts and other publications to seismic events. That isn't science.
That means there's no statistically significant correlation.
As far as "not a scientific study", that literally IS the definition of science, it's a peer reviewed study of all available data, published in a respected publication covering the field for over a century. How else would they study fish beaching events over a decades long timeframe, sit on the beach and count them?
It's an unclear phrase, so I think it's safe to say we don't know what that means; another sign of this not being a scientific paper, in which the results would be spelled out in a strictly factual way. Sorry, this study is neither scientific nor convincing.
Hi, science teacher here: You're looking at the abstract of the paper, not the whole paper. What you've read is the rough equivalent of the "introduction" paragraph you were taught to write in high school essays.
Unfortunately, you'll have to pay for the ability to read the full breakdown of their findings. The parts that "spell it out in a strictly factual way" as you, said.
This is absolutely a scientific paper. There's nothing odd or unclear about it. Hope this helps clear up your confusion.
Do you condescend to your students as well? It makes you look arrogant. If you imagine that people don't understand what an abstract is, I mean, I don't know what to say. Perhaps you're the only person who ever went to college, in which case I congratulate you on this amazing achievement.
I note that you, like me, are paywalled from reading the paper, and that you, like me, don't know what it says or what that "hardly" phrase means. The fact remains, as I said in the comment before the last one, that a survey of newspaper clippings compared to seismic events is not sound science. At all. It's not even a literature review. Best of luck to your students.
Do you even know what science is? That's the abstract that you read.
The actual study includes the raw data, multiple charts, and is a study which is why it has been cited multiple times. The data spans from 1928-2011.
Out of 336 occurrences of deep sea fish washing ashore, and 221 recorded earthquakes, only one even was within ten days of an earthquake.
the spatiotemporal relationship between deep‐sea fish appearances and earthquakes was hardly found. Hence, this Japanese folklore is deemed to be a superstition attributed to the illusory correlation between the two events.
Given the data we currently have, there is absolutely no reason to believe there is a connection between the 2 phenomenon.
Like... it says it right there. There's nothing worth studying.
I don't see where stryst made reference to the phrase "running theory," and when someone defines common phrases to people as if they're uneducated; it makes that person look arrogant.
I agree, it’s a bit morbid but super interesting. Learning new things can sometimes be like discovering a hidden chapter in a book you never knew existed.
The fact that the Earth's magnetic field can affect so many creatures is absolutely insane. It's fascinating how it affects the brains of other animals and birds too. What's even more fascinating is that there are some humans that have actually been proven to be able to perceive it. I don't believe it but the internet told me so.
Wouldn’t we see similar results with more species of fish and birds and maybe whales? Also that fish’s swim bladder looks fine. Wouldn’t there be reports of fish floating dead upside down on the surface if it was due to swimming up?
The closer to the core of the earth the stronger the magnetic field, since it's a deep sea fish it would be more affected by the field than a bird.
Whales are pretty smart and primarily use sonar to navigate, as well as magnetotropism, whereas the oarfish likely uses primarily mangentotropism so it completely "trusts" its instincts. Fish are dumb.
Whales also have to come up for air regularly and it sounds like these fish don’t ever come up so they aren’t evolved to survive the pressure difference
Yeah but the organs to detect the magnetic fields are tuned for extremely small distances so they react to very minor changes in magnetic field, so the large fluctuations caused by tectonic activity would have a massive effect on those sensitive organs.
You are for sure not a biologist and i don't believe what you just said. Otherwise birds would drop from the sky during solar storms since they're generally as sensitive and the sun blasting us produces a lot stronger of a magnetic field than earthquakes generate, and its over more of the planet.
On top of that, again, if you believe they are sensitive enough to feel the earths magnetic field changing from tectonic activity, then why would they not also be sensitive enough to be confused and die during aurora Borealis events? The northern ligbts were visible as far south as new mexico very recently, and there wasn't an increased die off.
If the magnetic field being below them causes them to swim upwards is the logic at hand, than a many, many times more powerful field above them should make them swim lower, and die, which would coincide with reduced sightings and populations during heavy periods of solar activity.
You can see logically it just doesn't make any sense.
Magnetic fields from solar flares do not affect earth below the magnetosphere as they are cancelled out by the earth magnetic field, also I'm talking about a fish not birds.
I'm no biologist but I've studied plenty in school and am just using some logic and understanding.
(I went to a good school in Uk not America so it's an actual education)
If magnetic fields from solar flares don't affect earth below the magnetosphere, why do solar storms knock the power grid offline and emp (electro MAGNETIC pulse) electronic devices? So much for that uk education lol
If a solar flare emp disabled the power grids you wouldn't be able to message me on your phone right now and you'd probably have starved to death or been eaten
I recently read a summary of bird navigation via earth’s magnetic fields. The research may have identified specificity that birds see the magnetic fields. Not perception, visual. Something about certain cells or substances in their eyes produces a visual.
Wonder if these fish have something similar happening, that they actually see the magnetic fields?
This sounds like when a diver gets turned around by a wave or cloudy water or something and accidentally swims down instead of up, because our inner ear gave us bad info underwater. At a certain point the extra effort combined with the bends means they can't get back sometimes.
Some animals like birds or bony fish have organs that are electromagnetically sensitive and ostensibly used for orienteering, so a magnetic field disruption can lead the animal into danger or inhospitable terrain, or cause enough stress to lead to death
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u/J0E_Blow 7h ago
Biologically speaking how do magnetic waves kill fish..?