Discovery Channel’s Shark Week is an immensely popular block of programming that focuses on our toothy buddies, the elasmobranchs. This year Georgia Aquarium will play a central role in the theming for Shark Week, and that’s already started in the form of a new UStream feed of a special camera that’s been added to the Ocean Voyager exhibit to give people a fish’s eye view of the tank’s inhabitants. I could watch these things for hours, but to make it a bit more scientific, my challenge to you, readers, is to add in the comments below the names of every species you can identify in the tank. Bonus points for scientific binomials. I’ll give you a hint: there are 63 species.
6 Replies to “Get a fish’s eye view of Shark Week”
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…I’ve got five minutes to kill, I’ll get the list started:
Acanthurus coeruleus (Blue tang surgeon)
Stegastoma fasciatum (zebra shark)
Yellowtail snapper (can’t remember binomial off top of my head and too lazy to look it up)
Epinephalus sp. (grouper, wasn’t close enough for species)
Chelinius undulatus (Humphead/Maori wrasse)
Charcharias (=Odontaspis) taurus (sand tiger shark)
Trachinotus carolinus (pompano)
Anisotremus virginicus (porkfish)
Carcharhinus sp. (brown shark- C. plumbeus? was at a distance)
Carcharhinus melanopterus (pacific blacktip shark)
Rhinoptera bonasus (cownose ray)
Caranx hippos (crevalle jack)
Pomacanthus sp. (is that an Asfur angel, P. asfur?)
Manta birostris (manta ray…holy crap you have mantas in that tank!)
Rainbow runner (can’t remember binomial…still to lazy to google it)
Lutjanus sp. (some kind of snapper, wasn’t close enough)
Great start! Yes on all of those except the mantas aren’t M. birostris and we have two species (that’s a tough one). The angel is a Passer angel, Holacanthus passer. Look closely for several other jack species in addition to crevalles. I think the way the camera is situated it might be hard to catch a glimpse of some bottom dwellers, but keep it up, there are at least 20 elasmobranch species to see.
this needs to be a 24 hour tv channel
Are the mantas alfredi?
Rhincodon typus!
I shouted “Omigod Whale Shark!” at my screen, despite having watched them there in person for about 4 hours about two weeks ago :-)
Wow, this is incredible – I agree it should be a 24 hour TV channel!