Shark washes up on Oregon Coast

Dolphin, shark, other 'oddities' wash up along Oregon Coast

By ANTONIA GIEDWOYN, kgw.com Staff

Last week’s stormy weather at the Oregon Coast led to some unusual finds on the beach over the weekend, Seaside Aquarium staff said Tuesday.

Beachcombers found a dolphin, a porpoise, a shark and a rare fish.

“All died recently, and thanks to enormous west winds, blew up onshore with the storms,” said aquarium spokeswoman Tiffany Boothe.

The long-beaked dolphin was the first dolphin that aquarium staff have ever seen wash up in the area, even though they are common to Oregon coastal waters, Boothe said. It measured about 5 and 1/2 feet long.


The salmon shark was only about 3 and 1/2 feet long and is a type of shark often mistaken for great whites, although great whites are larger by a foot or more in length.

Someone also reported finding a mola mola -- ocean sun fish -- which are rarely spotted on the north coast.

The washed-up porpoise measured about 2 and 1/2 feet long.

Another beachcomber, Terry Morse of Newport, found a bunch of odd jellyfish, some of which were still alive, he discovered, when he took them back home and put them in a petri dish to study them under a microscope. They began swimming again when put in sea water.


COMMENTS:

Not much I can say here except for this is a sad but interesting story

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Male fish gives birth at Oregon Aquarium

Unusual male fish gives birth at Oregon Aquarium

By TERESA BELL / kgw.com

SEASIDE, Oregon – At the Seaside Aquarium, dozens of fish have been born from what many would consider quite an unlikely source: a male fish.


A baby pipefish.
Pipefish are long, rounded creatures related to the sea horse, that have an unusual life process. The female pipefish has the eggs originally, but transfers them to the male. He fertilizes them, and then he is the one responsible during the remaining gestation period.

"We are not sure how long the baby pipefish will be on display," said Tiffany Boothe, an education specialist with the Seaside Aquarium. "The aquarium has had pipefish in the past give birth, but because of their size and fragility when born, we have had no luck keeping them alive. We are going to try a slightly new tactic, though we are not too optimistic that it will work. Because of this we also plan on releasing some of the babies into a local estuary."


The new tactics involve leaving them where they are this time, Boothe said. In the past, they've tried a variety of approaches to help these babies survive, mostly involving taking them out of the tank and putting them in another by themselves. They've tried variations on that theme, such as a tank with filtered water, without filtered water, and other combinations.

"Instead of putting them in another tank, we'll just do nothing," Boothe said. "We'll leave them in there, because that tank is a lot like the environment they come from, with its fauna and so on. It's also got raw water pumping in there, so there's lots of phytoplankton."


In natural habitat, pipefish live in shallow water among eelgrass, algae, and other types of vegetation in estuaries and bays.


Boothe said they're expecting even more babies. With the eggs of as many as three females involved, it could mean there are dozens more waiting to be born, all inside the male in various stages of gestation.


"Spawning for pipefish begins in May when the female pipefish passes her eggs to the male," Boothe said. "The courtship between the male and female tends to be an elaborately choreographed display, where female and male entangle themselves around each other over and over again. They look as if they are dancing. The male may receive eggs from two to three different females and can carry up to 225 eggs."


COMMENT: I have kept Pipefish, however I have never bred them (I have bred their cousins the seahorse). These are interesting although delicate fish to keep in an aquarium. I only recommend them in a non-competitive reef or nano-reef aquarium as most fish will out compete them for food and make them nervous. I have generally fed Brine Shrimp and Mysis Shrimp and have also kept them in tanks with a lot of hiding places including live rock and caulerpa algae.
"Marine Aquarium Basics" can provide more information and links to keeping these and other marine/saltwater fish.

Rare Ratfish, Oregon

Rare Ratfish found on Oregon Shores dies -

Associated Press and KGW.com Staff


SEASIDE, Ore. - A rare fish from the deep that had the Seaside Aquarium buzzing today has died.

The ratfish, described as both cute and bizarre, and usually lives too deep in the ocean to show up on land.

But a group of kids from Oregon City brought in a three-foot-long Spotted Ratfish over the weekend. They had found it on the southern cove area of Seaside -- still alive.

Aquarium spokeswoman Tiffany Boothe says the spotted ratfish's technical name is 'Hydrolagus colliei,' and is named ratfish for its rat-like appearance.

Scientists were not sure if the fish would survive the night. It had a sore on it's right fin that was making life difficult. Boothe said "at one point, it got stuck upside down and couldn't right itself."

On Monday Boothe said the fish didn't make it through the night. She said "the fact that he was already washed up on shore was not a good sign to begin with."

The aquarium was keeping the fish in a freezer in case a local school wanted to disect it to try and figure out how it died.

The ratfish exists between southeast Alaska and Baha, California. But sometimes it is found in shallower waters off the Oregon coast.

The aquarium says sometimes fishermen bring the ratfish when they accidentally catch them. But Boothe says it's really very rare they wash up on the beach.

Pet Food Recall Ingredient Found In Fish Feed

Pet Food Recall Ingredient Found In Fish Feed - SALEM, Ore. -- The Food and Drug Administration has confirmed that a chemical that caused thousands of pets to become sick has been found in fish feed in Oregon.

Melamine was found in fish feed at the Marion Forks Hatchery in Idanha, according to the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife.

The feed is used as a starter diet for juvenile salmon and trout, the ODFW said. The distributors of the feed had also sent it to the Willamette, Gnat Creek, Big Creek, Cole Rivers, Butte Falls and Leaburg hatcheries, according to the ODFW.

For the full article, please click above.




Comment:
Melamine is an organic base with the chemical formula C3H6N6. Melamine in wheat gluten added to mass-produced dog and cat foods has been associated with renal failure, which could be explained by the ammonia that may result from the digestion of the melamine.
The addition of "melamine scrap" into fish and livestock feed to give the false appearance of a higher level of protein (which is due to the urea contained there in), was an "open secret" in many parts of China, reporting that this melamine scrap was being produced at at least one plant processing coal into melamine.

Most fish foods do not use much Wheat Gluten and obtain their Gluten from within the USA. The amounts of potential contamination of most foods is low as the better fish foods have Wheat Gluten very low on their list of ingredients (unlike many pet foods), that even with contamination, the risks are very low. In fact the main food I feed is Spirulina 20 which has a small amount of Wheat Gluten and I have a VERY healthy tank(s).

I recommend reading this article about fish nutrition and being more concerned with the VERY poor quality of ingredients that go into many of the popular fish foods such as TetraMin rather than the Melamine scare: Quality Fish Food (Proper Aquatic Nutrition); What ingredients are needed for proper fish nutrition, growth and health.


Carl