
How ultra-black fish disappear in the deepest seas - aaronharnly
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/16/science/ultra-black-fish.html
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DC-3
> “I’m always arguing with bird people on the internet,” said Kory Evans, a
> fish biologist at Rice University who wasn’t involved in the study. “I say,
> ‘I bet these deep-sea fish are as dark as your birds of paradise.’ And then
> boom, they checked, and that was exactly the case.”

I'm sick of reading internet arguments about polymorphism and browser
monoculture and borrow checking and static linking. Someone please tell me
where I can go on the internet to read biologists arguing about their favorite
animals.

~~~
ramraj07
If you can ever pick up the book Fly Pushing in some library (or if you're
rich just buy), it's a great read about drosophila handling and genetics that
is fascinating even if you don't intend to work with them. And they constantly
bash worm people. The two are at odds with each other and it's an age-old
battle. I'm constantly torn between the two organisms though. Some of the most
"pleasurable" science I have done I did with these creatures.

~~~
acomjean
Huh. I worked in fly the last 5 years and I’ve not noticed this (we work next
to a worm lab). Fly are pretty low on the model species list (human, rat,
mouse, fish), and with cell lines experimenting on human cells is becoming
more prevalent. Fly researchers know they aren’t at the top and seem quite
pleasant to work with. Still with orthologous gene mapping working with fly
genetics still has lots of uses.

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aaronharnly
These ultrablack fish are on par with the blackest artificial pigments:

“A feat of engineering allowed humans to best them all with synthetic
materials, some of which reflect only 0.045 percent of incoming light.
(“Black” paper, on the other hand, returns a whopping 10 percent of the light
it meets.)

Now, it seems fish may come close to trouncing them all.

One species profiled in the paper, a bioluminescent anglerfish in the genus
Oneirodes, reflects as little as 0.044 to 0.051 percent of the deep-sea light
it encounters. The other 99.95 percent, Mr. Davis and his colleagues found,
gets lost in a labyrinth of light-swallowing pigments until it effectively
disappears.”

The use of ultrablack combined with bioluminescence is especially interesting
— the fish puts a glowing lure to attract other fish, and has ultrablack skin
to stay nearly invisible as the prey approaches.

~~~
dccoolgai
Fun pigment fact: everyone can use the "pinkest pink" except the inventor of
the "blackest black"
[https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wired.com/story/vantablack-...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wired.com/story/vantablack-
anish-kapoor-stuart-semple/amp)

~~~
labster
He didn’t invent it, he purchased an exclusive license to use Vantablack in
art.

Also, posting AMP links is treason, according to Friend Computer. Please
report to the nearest suicide booth with clearance orange or lower for further
processing. Using yellow suicide booths or higher will result in increased
clone mortality.

~~~
syngrog66
Paranoia! most fun RPG ever. TRUST NOONE. KEEP YOUR LASER HANDY AT ALL TIMES.

once had beer with designer Greg Costikyan. (while Steve Jackson stood nearby
plugging his ears.)

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krisoft
How can you publish an article about ultra-black fish without putting a
picture of a fish in some recognizable environment?

Put it on a lab bench, next to a human hand and some printer paper. Or a
banana. Anything the reader might recognize.

"While some ultra-black fish might appear brownish, it’s the product of camera
overexposure and editing" Great. You know what does that mean? You need to
find a better photo. That's what it means. What kind of lazy caption that is.

~~~
grawprog
[https://www.sciencealert.com/one-of-nature-s-blackest-
colour...](https://www.sciencealert.com/one-of-nature-s-blackest-colours-
makes-fish-invisible-deep-in-the-ocean/amp)

>Incidentally, this is what initially piqued Karen Osborn's interest. As a
research zoologist at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History,
she grew frustrated trying to photograph a striking black fish that had been
pulled from the deep sea. "It didn't matter how you set up the camera or
lighting—they just sucked up all the light," says Osborn.

~~~
jfengel
The photos in that article are full of nope.

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ghastmaster
Vantablack absorbs up to 99.96% and the species of fish absorbs 99.95%. They
must be talking about certain cells or pigments rather than the entire fish
since they do not appear ultra-black in the images I see.

Found in the paper:

> We used a back-reflectance probe calibrated to a 2% diffuse reflectance
> standard to measure the reflectance at perpendicular incidence from the
> blackest undamaged patches of skin.

~~~
dmix
The sublinked NYTime article on ultra-black does a good job explaining both
biological and manufactured blackest-of-blacks (with carbon nanotubes):

[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/11/science/black-fashion-
phy...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/11/science/black-fashion-physics-
animals.html)

Although predating the fish study.

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lioeters
[https://outline.com/zpTqCE](https://outline.com/zpTqCE)

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neonate
[https://archive.is/Pd5vY](https://archive.is/Pd5vY)

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A_No_Name_Mouse
Title might be a bit misleading: they disappear against the black background,
it's not that their numbers are diminishing.

~~~
webwielder2
But let's be honest, their numbers are probably diminishing too.

~~~
pvaldes
Not necessarily. Could be increasing perfectly. We just didn't studied them
yet.

