6 ms·

How ultra-black fish disappear in the deepest seas

122 points by aaronharnly 6y ago

A_No_Name_Mouse 6y ago
Title might be a bit misleading: they disappear against the black background, it's not that their numbers are diminishing.
- dang 6y ago
  Our software decapitates some titles that have 'how' at the head. Usually they're less baity that way but occasionally a wrong meaning is created. We've re-howed this one.
- webwielder2 6y ago
  But let's be honest, their numbers are probably diminishing too.
  - Threeve303 6y ago
    If they weren’t already, they will be now that humans have found them
  - pvaldes 6y ago
    Not necessarily. Could be increasing perfectly. We just didn't studied them yet.
krisoft 6y ago
How can you publish an article about ultra-black fish without putting a picture of a fish in some recognizable environment? Put it on a lab bench, next to a human hand and some printer paper. Or a banana. Anything the reader might recognize. "While some ultra-black fish might appear brownish, it’s the product of camera overexposure and editing" Great. You know what does that mean? You need to find a better photo. That's what it means. What kind of lazy caption that is.
- aliante 6y ago
  Don’t deep sea fish somewhat explode when raised?
- tejohnso 6y ago
  Some relevant photos in this article linked from TFA.
- marcosdumay 6y ago
  If there wasn't overexposure and editing, the fish would be just as black as the background, and you wouldn't be able to see them. Also, there may be none of those fish living in a more recognizable environment. A dead fish is too different from a living one, so it's not worth picturing them. Those photos are actually very good. They show in clear detail how those fish look like, including colors (not all entirely black). They are indeed missing a clear indication of their size (that could be artificial), but otherwise there isn't much to improve.
  - krisoft 6y ago
    "If there wasn't overexposure and editing, the fish would be just as black as the background, and you wouldn't be able to see them." Sure thing. In that environment that is true. I bet they didn't measure their reflectivity in the deep, but on a lab bench though. "A dead fish is too different from a living one, so it's not worth picturing them." Maybe so, except that's not true. Here is a picture of a common fangtooth: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/a6/cd/3f/a6cd3f0a9cc47b9794fa89633e4b119d.jpg https://i.pinimg.com/originals/a6/cd/3f/a6cd3f0a9cc47b9794fa... And here is an other one: https://insider.si.edu/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/fangtooth-e1406148315656.jpg https://insider.si.edu/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/fangtooth-... Any of these pictures would have been better to illustrate their colour.
- sandworm101 6y ago
  It is literally impossible for us with our human eyes to perceive these fish in anything like their natural environment. They aren't even black, to us. We evolved to see things in sunlight. These fish are black at the wavelengths present in the deep. That isn't sunlight but luminescence. Shine sunlight on them and they could be any colour, something irrelevant for a fish that may well live without ever seeing sunlight. So we have a black fish illuminated by a light our eyes were not designed to see, in a place so dark we see can see nothing. Those aren't great preconditions for an accurate photoshoot.
aaronharnly 6y ago
These ultrablack fish are on par with the blackest artificial pigments: “A feat of engineering allowed humans to best them all with synthetic materials, some of which reflect only 0.045 percent of incoming light. (“Black” paper, on the other hand, returns a whopping 10 percent of the light it meets.) Now, it seems fish may come close to trouncing them all. One species profiled in the paper, a bioluminescent anglerfish in the genus Oneirodes, reflects as little as 0.044 to 0.051 percent of the deep-sea light it encounters. The other 99.95 percent, Mr. Davis and his colleagues found, gets lost in a labyrinth of light-swallowing pigments until it effectively disappears.” The use of ultrablack combined with bioluminescence is especially interesting — the fish puts a glowing lure to attract other fish, and has ultrablack skin to stay nearly invisible as the prey approaches.
- dccoolgai 6y ago
  Fun pigment fact: everyone can use the "pinkest pink" except the inventor of the "blackest black" https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wired.com/story/vantablack-anish-kapoor-stuart-semple/amp https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wired.com/story/vantablack-...
  - labster 6y ago
    He didn’t invent it, he purchased an exclusive license to use Vantablack in art. Also, posting AMP links is treason, according to Friend Computer. Please report to the nearest suicide booth with clearance orange or lower for further processing. Using yellow suicide booths or higher will result in increased clone mortality.
    - cosmodisk 6y ago
      Does the suicide booth accept coins attached to a string? Or is it all crypto nowadays?
    - yummypaint 6y ago
      Yup. Auto downvote for all AMP links
    - 6y ago
DC-3 6y ago
> “I’m always arguing with bird people on the internet,” said Kory Evans, a fish biologist at Rice University who wasn’t involved in the study. “I say, ‘I bet these deep-sea fish are as dark as your birds of paradise.’ And then boom, they checked, and that was exactly the case.” I'm sick of reading internet arguments about polymorphism and browser monoculture and borrow checking and static linking. Someone please tell me where I can go on the internet to read biologists arguing about their favorite animals.
- nix23 6y ago
  Twitter ;)
- DanBC 6y ago
  He's funny on Twitter. "Call me when a bird does this": https://twitter.com/Sternarchella/status/1220928865591271424?s=20 https://twitter.com/Sternarchella/status/1220928865591271424... "Imagine dropping this hard. Birds could never." https://twitter.com/Sternarchella/status/1274179373235568641?s=20 https://twitter.com/Sternarchella/status/1274179373235568641...
- ramraj07 6y ago
  If you can ever pick up the book Fly Pushing in some library (or if you're rich just buy), it's a great read about drosophila handling and genetics that is fascinating even if you don't intend to work with them. And they constantly bash worm people. The two are at odds with each other and it's an age-old battle. I'm constantly torn between the two organisms though. Some of the most "pleasurable" science I have done I did with these creatures.
  - acomjean 6y ago
    Huh. I worked in fly the last 5 years and I’ve not noticed this (we work next to a worm lab). Fly are pretty low on the model species list (human, rat, mouse, fish), and with cell lines experimenting on human cells is becoming more prevalent. Fly researchers know they aren’t at the top and seem quite pleasant to work with. Still with orthologous gene mapping working with fly genetics still has lots of uses.
lioeters 6y ago
https://outline.com/zpTqCE https://outline.com/zpTqCE
neonate 6y ago
https://archive.is/Pd5vY https://archive.is/Pd5vY
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
ghastmaster 6y ago
Vantablack absorbs up to 99.96% and the species of fish absorbs 99.95%. They must be talking about certain cells or pigments rather than the entire fish since they do not appear ultra-black in the images I see. Found in the paper: > We used a back-reflectance probe calibrated to a 2% diffuse reflectance standard to measure the reflectance at perpendicular incidence from the blackest undamaged patches of skin.
- dmix 6y ago
  The sublinked NYTime article on ultra-black does a good job explaining both biological and manufactured blackest-of-blacks (with carbon nanotubes): https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/11/science/black-fashion-physics-animals.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/11/science/black-fashion-phy... Although predating the fish study.

122 points by aaronharnly 6y ago

Title might be a bit misleading: they disappear against the black background, it's not that their numbers are diminishing.

dang 6y ago
Our software decapitates some titles that have 'how' at the head. Usually they're less baity that way but occasionally a wrong meaning is created. We've re-howed this one.
webwielder2 6y ago
But let's be honest, their numbers are probably diminishing too.
- Threeve303 6y ago
  If they weren’t already, they will be now that humans have found them
- pvaldes 6y ago
  Not necessarily. Could be increasing perfectly. We just didn't studied them yet.

krisoft 6y ago

How can you publish an article about ultra-black fish without putting a picture of a fish in some recognizable environment? Put it on a lab bench, next to a human hand and some printer paper. Or a banana. Anything the reader might recognize. "While some ultra-black fish might appear brownish, it’s the product of camera overexposure and editing" Great. You know what does that mean? You need to find a better photo. That's what it means. What kind of lazy caption that is.

aliante 6y ago
Don’t deep sea fish somewhat explode when raised?
tejohnso 6y ago
Some relevant photos in this article linked from TFA.
marcosdumay 6y ago
If there wasn't overexposure and editing, the fish would be just as black as the background, and you wouldn't be able to see them. Also, there may be none of those fish living in a more recognizable environment. A dead fish is too different from a living one, so it's not worth picturing them. Those photos are actually very good. They show in clear detail how those fish look like, including colors (not all entirely black). They are indeed missing a clear indication of their size (that could be artificial), but otherwise there isn't much to improve.
- krisoft 6y ago
  "If there wasn't overexposure and editing, the fish would be just as black as the background, and you wouldn't be able to see them." Sure thing. In that environment that is true. I bet they didn't measure their reflectivity in the deep, but on a lab bench though. "A dead fish is too different from a living one, so it's not worth picturing them." Maybe so, except that's not true. Here is a picture of a common fangtooth: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/a6/cd/3f/a6cd3f0a9cc47b9794fa89633e4b119d.jpg https://i.pinimg.com/originals/a6/cd/3f/a6cd3f0a9cc47b9794fa... And here is an other one: https://insider.si.edu/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/fangtooth-e1406148315656.jpg https://insider.si.edu/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/fangtooth-... Any of these pictures would have been better to illustrate their colour.
sandworm101 6y ago
It is literally impossible for us with our human eyes to perceive these fish in anything like their natural environment. They aren't even black, to us. We evolved to see things in sunlight. These fish are black at the wavelengths present in the deep. That isn't sunlight but luminescence. Shine sunlight on them and they could be any colour, something irrelevant for a fish that may well live without ever seeing sunlight. So we have a black fish illuminated by a light our eyes were not designed to see, in a place so dark we see can see nothing. Those aren't great preconditions for an accurate photoshoot.

aaronharnly 6y ago

These ultrablack fish are on par with the blackest artificial pigments: “A feat of engineering allowed humans to best them all with synthetic materials, some of which reflect only 0.045 percent of incoming light. (“Black” paper, on the other hand, returns a whopping 10 percent of the light it meets.) Now, it seems fish may come close to trouncing them all. One species profiled in the paper, a bioluminescent anglerfish in the genus Oneirodes, reflects as little as 0.044 to 0.051 percent of the deep-sea light it encounters. The other 99.95 percent, Mr. Davis and his colleagues found, gets lost in a labyrinth of light-swallowing pigments until it effectively disappears.” The use of ultrablack combined with bioluminescence is especially interesting — the fish puts a glowing lure to attract other fish, and has ultrablack skin to stay nearly invisible as the prey approaches.

dccoolgai 6y ago
Fun pigment fact: everyone can use the "pinkest pink" except the inventor of the "blackest black" https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wired.com/story/vantablack-anish-kapoor-stuart-semple/amp https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wired.com/story/vantablack-...
- labster 6y ago
  He didn’t invent it, he purchased an exclusive license to use Vantablack in art. Also, posting AMP links is treason, according to Friend Computer. Please report to the nearest suicide booth with clearance orange or lower for further processing. Using yellow suicide booths or higher will result in increased clone mortality.
  - cosmodisk 6y ago
    Does the suicide booth accept coins attached to a string? Or is it all crypto nowadays?
  - yummypaint 6y ago
    Yup. Auto downvote for all AMP links
  - 6y ago

DC-3 6y ago

> “I’m always arguing with bird people on the internet,” said Kory Evans, a fish biologist at Rice University who wasn’t involved in the study. “I say, ‘I bet these deep-sea fish are as dark as your birds of paradise.’ And then boom, they checked, and that was exactly the case.” I'm sick of reading internet arguments about polymorphism and browser monoculture and borrow checking and static linking. Someone please tell me where I can go on the internet to read biologists arguing about their favorite animals.

nix23 6y ago
Twitter ;)
DanBC 6y ago
He's funny on Twitter. "Call me when a bird does this": https://twitter.com/Sternarchella/status/1220928865591271424?s=20 https://twitter.com/Sternarchella/status/1220928865591271424... "Imagine dropping this hard. Birds could never." https://twitter.com/Sternarchella/status/1274179373235568641?s=20 https://twitter.com/Sternarchella/status/1274179373235568641...
ramraj07 6y ago
If you can ever pick up the book Fly Pushing in some library (or if you're rich just buy), it's a great read about drosophila handling and genetics that is fascinating even if you don't intend to work with them. And they constantly bash worm people. The two are at odds with each other and it's an age-old battle. I'm constantly torn between the two organisms though. Some of the most "pleasurable" science I have done I did with these creatures.
- acomjean 6y ago
  Huh. I worked in fly the last 5 years and I’ve not noticed this (we work next to a worm lab). Fly are pretty low on the model species list (human, rat, mouse, fish), and with cell lines experimenting on human cells is becoming more prevalent. Fly researchers know they aren’t at the top and seem quite pleasant to work with. Still with orthologous gene mapping working with fly genetics still has lots of uses.

lioeters 6y ago

https://outline.com/zpTqCE https://outline.com/zpTqCE

neonate 6y ago

https://archive.is/Pd5vY https://archive.is/Pd5vY

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

ghastmaster 6y ago

Vantablack absorbs up to 99.96% and the species of fish absorbs 99.95%. They must be talking about certain cells or pigments rather than the entire fish since they do not appear ultra-black in the images I see. Found in the paper: > We used a back-reflectance probe calibrated to a 2% diffuse reflectance standard to measure the reflectance at perpendicular incidence from the blackest undamaged patches of skin.

dmix 6y ago
The sublinked NYTime article on ultra-black does a good job explaining both biological and manufactured blackest-of-blacks (with carbon nanotubes): https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/11/science/black-fashion-physics-animals.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/11/science/black-fashion-phy... Although predating the fish study.