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The following interview with Theodore Gill was conducted by a Washington Post reporter in August 1889. Within the previous decade, a great deal of information about marine life in the depths of the oceans had become available due to explorations on specially equipped ships. It was an exciting time for both naturalists and interested laymen. The text of the interview with Gill is being reproduced here from Washington Post, 11 August 1889.
ODD FISHES IN THE SEASome of Them Live 18,000 Feet below the Surface THEIR USE IN NATURE UNKNOWN Strange Creatures with Phosphorescent Eyes and Luminous Appendages to Attract Their Prey – The Champion Swallower of the Ocean Described "There are strange-looking creatures at the bottom of the sea," said Prof. Theodore Gill, of the Smithsonian Institution, to a Post reporter a few days ago. Professor Gill is one of the highest authorities on fishes in the United States, and in his little den up the tower of the gothic pile built with Mr. Smithson's money he has lots of books and pictures relating to all manner of creatures which inhabit the deep. "Our knowledge of deep-sea fishes is quite recent," continued Professor Gill. "Indeed, a quarter of a century ago some maintained that life to any extent did not exist at great depths; that it could not exist, in fact, because the sunlight could not penetrate so far beneath the surface. From time to time, however, strange and unfamiliar forms of fishes were found by accident, either floating on the surface or caught by fishermen. These forms bore every impress of coming from great depths and naturalists had the suspicion forced upon them that they had not by any means explored the domain of the sea. These new-found fishes had loose, flaccid structures; their bones were fibrous and so soft as to be easily penetrated by a needle, and their eyes were large. Experiments in deep-sea dredging were begun by a number of gentlemen at their own expense, and the result showed that the ocean was literally alive with fish. Finally the Challenger expedition was sent out, and it has taken thirty large volumes to recount all its discoveries." "How deep are fish found in the sea?" "They have been brought up from the depth of 2,900 fathoms, or nearly 18,000 feet below the surface. At that depth the pressure of the water is nearly three tons to the square inch. The difference between this pressure and that at the surface leads to many curious results. For instance, in the Madeiras, the fishermen catch with a hook and line a fish known as the cherne, which lives about 1,200 feet below the surface. When the fish is brought to the top it is nearly dead, and looks as if it had a cataleptic spasm. Its eyes are forced from their sockets and look so peculiar that when a person has prominent eyes the fishermen say he has 'eyes like a cherne.' Sometimes, from this same cause of difference in pressure, it rises faster as it approaches the surface than the line can be hauled in, and then it bobs up out of the water for some distance, just like a cork or bladder. Very frequently, fishes which are brought up in dredges or trawls from greater depths burst in pieces before they can be examined." "Are fishes specially equipped for living in such deep water?" "Certainly. In the first place they have as a general rule, large eyes. We can hardly imagine that there is any light at 10,000 or 15,000 feet below the surface and yet there must be some, or else the fishes would be blind. Cave fishes, which exist in total, absolute darkness, have no eyes at all, and I am certain that it would be the same case with deep-sea fishes if the same conditions existed. Of course, if a man could descend to such a depth he would see nothing, but I am convinced that there is a diffused light sufficient to enable the fishes to see. In order, however, to more fully equip the fishes, nature has provided them with phosphorescent spots like eyes." "What are they for?" "I can hardly tell you. All I know is that these eyes are ranged along both sides of the fish, and are perfect lenses. They either illumine the path of the fish through the abyssal depths, or else they serve to attract prey. I incline to the latter belief. There is no vegetable life in the region inhabited by these fishes, and they are carnivorous. They feed upon each other, and I have no doubt, also, but that a vast quantity of animal matter starts at the surface of the ocean and sinks steadily downward, like a constant rain, until it is devoured by these deep-sea fishes." "Are the deep waters of tropics more populous than those elsewhere?" "So far as the great depths are concerned, there is no indication at present that such is the case. The fishes of the deep sea are not subject to those of laws of distribution which regulate those of the shallow waters. Now in the shallow waters we have them divided or distributed into distinct zones–the tropical, temperate, north or south temperate, and arctic or antarctic. But in the deep seas the climate which determines on the surface the distribution of fishes is so nearly uniform that the same forms may be found all over the great depths. Another interesting thing is that fishes that are found at these great depths in the tropics may be found near the surface in the arctic or antarctic. A fish so rarely found in Scandinavian waters that nobody gave it an English name has been discovered in large quantities about 12,000 feet below the surface further south, fifty different species being now recognized." "Would this not indicate that fish travel for great distances under the sea?" "Well, it shows at least that they all sprang from a common center, and then, you know, they have had ages and ages in which to disperse themselves all over the globe."
"There must be some odd-looking fishes discovered?" "There is no doubt about that," replied Professor Gill. "This fish," he continued, pointing to a picture in a big book, "is an angling fish. This little bulb at the end of the long tentacle is phosphorescent. Fanciful and speculative naturalists have imagined that the fish uses this little attachment to explore dark holes in which his prey may lurk, as if he were a policeman armed with a bull's-eye lantern. I do not go as far as this. The bulb is evidently to attract other fish to their destruction. The man who patented luminous bait," added the professor laughingly, "was just several thousand years finding out something that nature could have told him at first." In the National Museum is a specimen of another odd form of deep sea fish known as the black swallower. It seizes by the tail a fish many times larger than itself and climbs over it with its immense jaws, using first one and then the other. As the captive is taken in, the stomach of the swallower stretches out until at last the entire fish is accommodated within its distended sides. Very often, however, this rapacity brings its own punishment. The decomposition of the captured fish fills the swallower's stomach with gas, and the greedy captor floats like a helpless balloon to the surface. Three specimens have thus been found, and the one in the National Museum contains in its stomach a fish twice as long and eight times bulkier than itself. The domain in which the swallower thus feasts in his own peculiar way averages a depth of about 9,000 feet. "Of what use are all these fishes in the deepest seas?" asked the reporter. "Quite a number of them," was the reply, "are fit for food, but as it costs about $500 to get a single specimen, you can easily see that they would be expensive eating. We know so little about them, however, that we actually are ignorant of the part they play in the economy of nature. The only deep sea fish that could have been utilized has disappeared entirely. This was the tile-fish. It was unknown until 1879, when specimens were brought to Boston by fishermen from a previously unknown bank about eighty miles southeast of No Man's Land, Mass. In the fall of 1880 it was extremely abundant along the coast of Southern New England at a depth of from 450 to 2,400 feet. After a severe gale in March, 1882, millions of the fish were discovered on the surface of the sea for a distance of 800 by 50 miles and since then it has not been seen." Deep-sea fishes are nearly always black in color. This might be accounted for by the fact that they live in abyssal darkness, were it not that cave-fishes, which have no light at all, are pale-colored. The fish that live at the depth of 600 feet are suffused with red, a color which is very prominent at this depth, and even at lower distances the filaments and fins are scarlet. As one descends towards the bottom of the ocean the number of different kinds of fish perceptibly decrease. At 18,000 feet there are only twenty-three species against 282 at 600 feet. The temperature of the water ranges from forty degrees to twenty-eight degrees, the latter being the freezing point of salt water. The fish brought from this frigid environment are generally smaller than those nearer the surface, but this may be, as Professor Gill says, because the big fish, as in all other well-regulated fishing expeditions, are not the ones to be caught. |
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