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National Geographic : 1910 May
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FISHES THAT CARRY LANTERNS SEVERAL years ago this Magazine published a description of the an gler fish, well known along the New England coast because of a device by means of which it lures and catches other fish.* This device consists of fila ments or tendrils resembling seaweed, which are attached to the head. When the angler is hungry it hunts out a convenient place in shallow waters, where its color and markings make the fish indistinguishable from the sea-bot tom. Here it lies quietly, often as if published by the Smithsonian Institution, and from which these notes are obtained. The most extraordinary of all the anglers are those that carry lanterns to see with. "Some stout-bodied anglers resorted to deep and deeper waters, where the light from the sun was faint or even ceased, and a wonderful provision was at last developed by kindly nature, which re placed the sun's rays by some reflected from the fish itself. In fact the illicium (a prolongation of the spine) has devel- A FISH WITH ITS LANTERN AND BAIT This tiny fish was dredged in the Indian Ocean at a depth of more than a mile (7,200 feet). The bulb-like upper figure is an enlargement of its torch. The fish is i12 inches long (excluding the rod and bulb). It swims with the rod and torch pointed straight forward. dead, while its floating filaments, kept in motion by the tide, decoy other fish, which never discover their mistake until too late to escape from the angler's mer ciless jaws. This angler fish :s the only one of its kind frequenting the shallow seas of northern Europe and North America, but there are many other related species inhabiting the deep seas of almost all parts of the globe, as well as lurking in the tropical groves and in the sargasso meadows of the Atlantic Ocean. These relatives of the angler are the subject of a bulletin by Theodore Gill, "Angler Fishes, Their Kinds and Ways," recerl'ly * See "The Purple Veil," by H. A. Large lamb, pp. 335-341, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC NIAG AZINE, 1905. oped into a rod with a bulb having a phosphorescent terminal portion, and the 'bait' round it has been also modified and variously added to; the fish has also had superadded to its fishing apparatus a lantern and worm-like lures galore. "How efficient such an apparatus must be in the dark depths where these angler fishes dwell may be judged from the fact that special laws have been enacted in some countries against the use of torches and other lights for night fishing because of their deadly attractiveness. Not only the curiosity of the little deep-sea fishes, but their appetite is appealed to by the worm-like objects close to or in relief against the phosphorescent bulb of the anglers." As may be inferred from the size of
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