PC: Yumi Henmi
Back a couple month ago in November 2024 I got the opportunity to join some researchers from Hokkaido University as they searched the reefs near our lab for this tiny nocturnal cardinal fish. Never one to say no to a night dive (or any dive for that matter), I joined them and helped the best I could to try to catch these tiny fish. They were probably only 1-2cm long but had an obvious red stripe along the lateral line. Personally I couldn't spot a single one on my own. The researchers found a few on our first night of diving the southern part of the research station, particularly around a downed tree that had fallen during a typhoon months earlier. The second night we dove the northern part of the lab, where they had even more success finding their target species. This wasn't a species that could be fished so scuba diving with hand nets was the only option. It was getting into the colder months in Maizuru so the surface water was getting frigid for my wetsuit at the time. Therefore i decided to swim a bit deeper and have a go trying to find that mystery shrimp I saw about a year earlier. To my sheer luck, I found 2 individuals and was able to capture them into a specimen tube. They are now in the hands of another shrimp specialist as we determine the best course of action to describe and classify them.
Marine Science is often sitting at a desk writing, rewriting papers, reports, proposals, editing English papers, or reading other papers for your own references. However, its nights like those that are so extremely exciting and fill me with purpose. The rush of finding and capturing a possibly new species was more addicting than anything.
