Scientists Want You to Photograph This Curious, Enigmatic Giant. - Keep an eye out for the giant sea bass’s spots.
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FOR A GOGGLED HUMAN, COMING face to face with a giant sea bass can be a little unsettling. Gray and gargantuan—sometimes growing more than seven feet long and topping out around 550 pounds—the husky Stereolepis gigas are “the rhinos of the kelp forest,” says Molly Morse, a project scientist at the Benioff Ocean Initiative at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
The heftiest marine bony fish close to California’s shore, the aptly named creature is prone to spooking divers, Morse says. “Imagine being underwater, where your senses are already on overdrive because you’re experiencing all this stuff you’re not used to,” she says. If the hulking fish starts to swim into your peripheral vision, “Initially, you might assume, ‘Oh, my gosh—it’s a great white shark, I’m going to die.’” But the giant sea bass isn’t out for human blood: It’s usually unusually affable, Morse says, and curious about human antics. Unfortunately, that gentleness once led fishers to identify it as an easy target and drastically hobble the population, which is known to swim only along the coasts of California and Mexico.
The giant sea bass is listed as critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN), and has been legally protected in California since the 1980s. To fill in the blanks about life cycle and migration patterns, Morse’s team at the Spotting Giant Sea Bassproject calls on divers to share observations of the fish they see—and specifically of the spots that speckle them.
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https://www.atlasobscura.com/article...ass-california