New England Aquarium - Divers Blog

Love is in the air, or water if you will. Our two porcupinefish, Spike and Fugu, first met in the G.O.T. two years ago, when Spike was brought up from one of our Bahamas collecting expeditions. At first, they didn't seem to really notice each other, but once Spike got a little older, and matured a bit, they became infatuated, and now are seldom seen apart.

Unlike some fish species that can change sexes, porcupinefish (Diodon hystrix) are dioecious, which means having the sexes in two different individuals. Because of the behavior of Spike and Fugu, we believe them to be male and female, although it's not possible to determine their sex simply by their appearance because they are not dimorphic (males and females visibly different).

Porcupinefish belong to the Diodontidae family, which also includes balloonfish and striped burrfish, both of which we have in the Giant Ocean Tank. Their most obvious characteristic is the presence of long spines that become erect when the fish inflates itself after feeling threatened, an ability that all pufferfishes possess. Their diet consists of hard shelled invertebrates such as sea urchins and crabs. Spike and Fugu are trained to come to the platform for their food, live crabs being their favorite. Here's a video of them swimming off into the sunset together:

Maybe they will get each other chocolate covered crabs for Valentine's Day!

-Chris

Labels: balloonfish, fugu, GiantOceanTank, Our Reef Residents, porcupinefish, spike, striped burrfish, valentine's day, video

How many fish are in the Giant Ocean Tank? How many sharks? Sea turtles? Stingrays? How many different species are in there? Visitors are always curious to know what they are looking at in the exhibit...

In order to find out, we spend the entire month of December counting each and every fish in the tank. Each staff diver picks a species to concentrate on during a particular dive and tallies their numbers. We keep an on-going record up on the dive office door:

We perform the annual census for different reasons. It allows us to accurately answer our visitor's questions. It's also an important part of record keeping and allows us to monitor, and manage, our collection. Because we have data going back four decades, we can track the longevity of particular species. It is also a requirement for AZA institutions like the New England Aquarium.

Some counts are easy, like the three sand tiger sharks. This is our largest female: