The Larboard Watch

Photo from the deck of the ocean liner SS Vestris as it is sinking off Hampton Roads with a loss of 112 people, November 11, 1928.

The Charles W. Morgan is back at Mystic Seaport! I went to visit her yesterday. It was a bit chilly and rainy, and she looked mournful under cloudy skies. Belowdecks was empty and quiet.

A slender mola washed up at the research station that I worked at this summer. These fish are gorgeous and are a pelagic fish that rarely come up into our temperate waters. This is another sure sign of an El Niño year here in California

They grow to about a meter which is nothing compared to some of the other members of the molidae family. 

The Leftvent - Linophryne lucifer

Leftvents are deep-sea anglerfish, who have the symbiotic bacteria and obligate parasitic males common to many of the other anglerfish.

The genus name Linophryne is Greek, and means “toad that fishes with a net”, and lucifer means, well, "Lucifer". It’s a devil-toad-fish with a net. The whole genus is sometimes called “netdevils”. They’re uncommon enough thatbasically the entire genus is known by that common name.