INTERESTING CITIZENS OF THE GULF STREAM 



MIAMI AQUARIUM COLLECTING CRUISER 



Photograph by James A. Allison 



X'apache" 



V Apache, Captain C. W. Peterson commanding, is one of a fleet of three power cruisers 

 used for investigating fish habitat in southern Florida waters and among the Bahama Islands. 

 The AUisoni and Chub, sister ships, were built for the purpose of gathering and bringing in 

 live specimens in their especially constructed live wells (see pages 53 to 60). 



has a regular, bright, "deep-water" red 

 color. But the mystery of how it comes 

 to such a color is easily explained, for it 

 has similar relatives living deeper down. 

 Evidently the Squirrel Fish has recently 

 come up in the fish world, and its big 

 eyes indicate that it has not yet adjusted 

 itself to the bright light of the surface 

 sun, but is more or less nocturnal. 



The Gulf Stream runs so close to the 

 coast of Florida that, when the wind is 

 right, quantities of the drifting yellow 

 gulf -weed it carries are washed ashore 

 and into the bays. A variety of fishes 

 hide in and about this weed. 



One of the commonest and perhaps the 

 most interesting, namely, the Mouse Fish, 

 spends its entire life in the drifting sar- 

 gassum. Colored in wonderful mimicry 

 of this habitat, its shape also, grotesquely 

 irregular, covered with leaf-like processes 

 or flakes, heightens the resemblance, so 

 as to make it well nigh invisible. This 

 protection against larger fish which might 

 disturb it probably also serves the pur- 

 pose of camouflage to enable it to ap- 

 proach and capture smaller fish, crabs, 

 and shrimps. 



The Mouse Fish, for its size, has a 



large mouth and appetite in proportion. 

 Many other species hide in the weed 

 when young and, as a rule, have colors 

 to match at that time of life, though 

 later these may be quite different. 



THE PORTUGUESE MAX-OE-WAR HAS A 

 FAITHFUL COMPANION FISH 



The rainbow-tinted pink, blue, or pur- 

 ple bubble-like floats of the Portuguese 

 Man-of-war (Plate IV) drift at the sur- 

 face over all tropical oceans and are 

 sometimes washed in close to the shore 

 in numbers. With them comes an inter- 

 esting little fish, Nomeus, the sting of 

 which is exceedingly severe, which never 

 strays far from the tentacles which 

 stream below the Man-of-war. 



When traveling 1 bv steamer along the 

 Florida coast the writer has watched for 

 Nomeus, and from where he stood on 

 deck has seen one and sometimes more 

 individuals lying suspended in the clear 

 water, their blackish ventral fins con- 

 spicuously spread, always within a short 

 distance of a Man-of-war, floating above. 



Comparatively few kinds of fishes are 

 abundant "off-sounding."' away from the 

 influence of the shore-line, and these mav 



