The Intersection

It should be no surprise to readers that I'm a huge fan of marine scientist, scibling, and friend Jennifer Jacquet. In many ways, I consider her my scienceblogging counterpart on the west coast. Last Saturday, we shared the Framing Science panel with Chris and even managed to have some fun in Durham over the weekend too.

So naturally I read Shifting Baselines and couldn't help but notice her post yesterday on the the slimy hagfishery off the coast of Maine. You see, the last talk I gave during graduate school was at an emerging fisheries meetup in Halifax, Nova Scotia where there were lots of interesting talks on hagfish. Your resident blogger was the only speaker on the ever charismatic sea cucumber. Go figure.

Anyway, those slime eels (myxine glutinosa) made a great big impression on me that I know I'll never forget and Jennifer's post reminds me why. Imagine a critter covered with special glands that emit a sticky slime made up of mucous. It's unique from other natural slime secretions because it's reinforced with tiny fibers making it strong and hard to remove. The slime reacts with sea water and just take a look...

And that's only the beginning:

They are sometime called the nastiest little creature in the sea. It's a scaleless fish with soft skin and thick barbels on the end of their mouth. They have no jaws and no bones. The hagfish's skeleton is made up entirely of cartilage. They have very poorly developed eyes located just under the skin and are almost blind. Hagfish feed by attaching themselves to passing fish. They bore inside an unsuspecting host. Once inside, the hagfish will actually eat the fish's flesh with a specialized rasping tongue. It literally eats its victim from the inside out.

Kind of makes one worry about the state of oceans when we're actually targeting this species for commercial harvest as traditionally fished stocks are depleted.

Once, fishermen looked at the slime eel -- an eyeless creature also known as the hagfish -- with disgust. They would haul up a healthy-looking cod from the deep only to find its body stuffed with foot-and-a-half-long slime eels busily eating the fish from the inside out.

But now, as strict new regulations drive New England fishermen away from their most lucrative catches, the malodorous slime eels are becoming the great wet hope for some on Gloucester's depressed waterfront.

Talk about shifting baselines...