A friend of ours is very explicit when it comes to
naming fish she sees when diving. Her
answer is “wrasse”. It
may be a blue wrasse, a yellow wrasse or a brown wrasse but that is as
far as she goes!! Actually
I think she does know more than she is prepared to admit.
However, when I go diving, I sometimes like to know
what I have seen and wonder whether all those silver fish I saw were the
same or not. So the Seasearch Fish Identification Course seemed a good idea to follow up the
Seasearch Course that Andrew & I did a few years ago which
introduced us to marine life and habitat that we may see whilst diving
in the UK.
The day course was taken by Dr Frances Dipper,
author of British Sea Fishes, and included lectures, practical
identification and some information about fish and their sustainability.
‘Marine Fish: An Introduction to their
Identification and Ecology for Divers’ gave a brief overview of the
different types of fish and general characteristics.
Also the varied environment where different fish would be found. We then had an opportunity of identifying fish, using FLEMMS,
which meant looking at Fins, Lateral
line, Eyes, Mouth,
Markings, Size.
First we used photographs, and then some ‘pickled’ fish.
Not an easy task (but a breeze compared with trying to identify
the fish in the aquarium later – they kept moving!!).
‘Fish
Lives: Life histories, survival, habitats’ continued to give more
information about habitat and behaviour before spending an hour or so in
the aquarium trying to identify the fish in the tanks (and trying not to
look at the labels first before pronouncing our identification!).
If only they would keep still and make sure all their fins were
clearly visible – fish with 3 dorsal fins tried to catch us out by
flattening one so that it looked as if they only had two.
After
another cup of tea/coffee, we then had a short presentation on ‘Can we
have our fish and eat them?’ which explained how fish are caught, what
bycatch is, and which fish we should avoid eating (see fishonline
for more information).
The
day was held at the Shipwreck Heritage
Centre in Hastings, and this was interesting to wander
around between the sessions, viewing the exhibits and reading about
wrecks in that particular area.
If you are interested in knowing a little bit more
about what you see when you dive in the UK, then the Seasearch website has plenty of information.
Fish identification
Course