The largest collection of dead fish in jars is housed in crumbling WWII bunkers in a sinking forest nestled by the banks of the lower Mississippi. It sounds like the set up for a creepy fable. Last weekend, I snuck Benton into a tour and drawing session hosted by a partnership between Tulane Biodiversity Research Center and the local Studio in the Woods. Artist and biologist, Brandon Ballengée lead the tour. Here is one of his beautiful pieces that he painted with spilled BP oil.
We parked in the hot sun along the grass covered levy and waited to drive in a line along empty gravel roads sporting crisp street signs named after armadillos, alligators, and wild boars. Passing an overgrown greenhouse, Benton and I imagined zombies emerging from the vines and broken glass. The bunkers, like grass covered turtles, face away from the river and into the swampy forest. We saw birds and butterflies on the drive, the woods an important stopover for migrating species.
Pre-Katrina, Tulane housed their more extensive natural history collection in this area. In the years since the storm, only the dead fish and some antique remnants of the mammal collection remain.
Inside, the buildings are plagued by black mold and other disrepair, but the jars are incredible (Tulane has funding for some remediation, but the process is long). As protected as we could be in our N-95’s, Benton and I walked the aisles of metal shelving. So many fish looked like grumpy characters, milky ghost-like eyes and frowning faces, drained of color.
Jarred collections in ethanol are increasingly rare around the world. New university administrators often toss them rather than continue the cost of maintenance. However, they remain crucial for researchers to be able to learn about where species have been found, to compare species over time, and to see how species adapt. Genetic material and fancy imaging is also an important component of studies using these specimens. Tulane’s collection is immense, despite the unlikely location. To give you an idea, three million uncatalogued jars are piled in boxes throughout the bunkers.
The jars are catalogued by pieces of paper inside with looping beautiful cursive script describing the contents. Catalogue no. Number of specimen. Date collected. Location name and latitude longitude. Scientific name. Name of collector.
The most famous specimen is the only of its kind ever found. A five and a half inch long Pocket Shark, Mollisquama mississippienis. It has tiny light emitting spots on its skin called photophores that are thought to glow in deep ocean waters. They may feed by taking tiny bites out of larger animals like whales, squid, and tuna. Named for a pocket behind its front fin that might produce luminous fluid, like a hunting flashlight!
In the second bunker, Brandon gave a slide presentation about how amazing fish are while we ate dried fish snacks and drew from dead fish on our tables. Fish are some of the oldest most adaptable creatures on the planet. Some are already evolving to climate change or overfishing. He described tumor-laden fish from polluted canals in the Netherlands pregnant with healthy babies. Overfished Atlantic cod started breeding a faster to develop and too-small-to-fish version. Meanwhile, the legal-to-fish larger cod continue to have a slower lifecycle. All that’s not to say many many species are suffering due to warming waters, pollution, and overfishing.
Ancient fish survive today, and look WILD. The lamprey rasps at the skin of another until it can latch and suck with its circles of concentric sucker teeth. The eyeless hagfish has only a slit for a mouth and weaponized slime it can produce to deter prey. It can tie itself in a knot to get leverage when taking a bite out of prey. There are wild looking benthic (bottom dwelling) bat fish and frog fish who walk and can’t swim. Our first land ancestors!
Fish are opportunistic reproducers. They have live birth, eggs and everything in between. They can change gender as populations dictate. The deep water angler fish with the bioluminescence are female, the males smaller larval creatures who bite the female and eventually are surrounded by her skin and function like testes. How eels reproduce is to this day a mystery. We know they swim from freshwater to ocean water to breed, but no one has found their breeding grounds. Magic.
Benton and I had a wonderful day together. Dream date.
The poet Rumi’s birthday was this week. My dad loved Rumi and would often open to a random page and meditate to whichever poem he read there.
Today, I did the same.
This one arrived.
It’s dedicated to a dear friend:
Unmarked Boxes Don't grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form. The child weaned from mother's milk now drinks whine and honey mixed. God's joy moves from unmarked box to unmarked box, from cell to cell. As rainwater, down to flowerbed. As roses, up from ground. Now it looks like a plate of rice and fish, now a cliff covered with vines, now a horse being saddled. It hides within these, till one day it cracks them open. Part of the self leaves the body when we sleep and changes shape. You might say, "Last night I was a cypress tree, a small bed of tulips, a field of grapevines." Then the phantasm goes away. You're back in the room. I don't want to make any one fearful. Hear what's behind what I say. Tatatumtum tatum tatadum There's the light gold of wheat in the sun and the gold of bread made from that wheat. I have neither. I'm only talking about them, as a town in the desert looks up at stars on a clear night. - Rumi
“Bellyache” - Billie Eilish
Love alla’yall
through time & space
I really do
XO
Cassie
What a special date!