November, 1999 
SCAMIT Newsletter 
Vol. 18, No.7 
Since we were in the Ichthyology Laboratory 
to watch the video, Jeff Siegel, who works in 
the lab, was nice enough to give us a tour of 
their collection. Their collection houses 
approximately 5 million specimens, many from 
Central and South America and Pakistan. The 
Allan Hancock Foundation Collection, 
primarily containing fishes of the temperate 
and tropical Eastern Pacific, is also housed at 
the museum. One of the collection strong 
points is mid-water fishes. They are a busy 
laboratory with 100-150 loans/year, 100 
visiting researchers/year, and numerous tour 
groups. In addition to complete specimens, the 
fish lab collection contains about 7,000 
skeletons, and consequently attracts 
anthropologists and paleontologists who need 
to identify fish from bones or otoliths alone. 
Jeff also told us that their lab possesses the 
world’s finest otolith collection with 
approximately 8,000-8,500 specimens. 
We then returned to the Worm Lab and 
proceeded with the business portion of the 
meeting. President Ron Velarde announced the 
next few meetings. He also announced that 
SCCWRP has approved the identifications of 
the Bight’98 special taxonomic groups; Larry 
Lovell will be identifying the lumbrinerids and 
the euclymenid maldanids, and John 
Ljubenkov will be identifying the cerianthids 
and the Edwardsiidae. Regarding the Bight’98 
re-identifications, Ron announced that the 
numerous laboratories involved are in various 
stages of distribution. 
A reminder (obtained from Annelida, http:// 
www.bio.net/hypermail/ANNELIDA/9912/) 
for the 7 th International Polychaete Conference 
registration was circulated. The closing date 
for registration is November 1,1999. One can 
register by e-mail at: elins@ni.is. There is also 
a registration form available at the conference 
website which is: http://www.ni.is/7IPCI. The 
conference dates are 2-6 July, 2001, and it is 
being held in Reykjavik, Iceland. 
Next Vice-President Leslie Harris reported on 
her trip to the Monterey area in late October. 
She spent some time at Moss Landing Marine 
Labs looking at holdfast fauna with Mike 
Foster. She also stopped at MBARI (Monterey 
Bay Aquarium Research Institute). While 
there, Craig Smith, from the University of 
Hawaii, happened to walk into the lab and an 
interesting chain of events evolved. Craig 
Smith conducts research on the animal 
communities that live on benthic whale 
skeletons. When whales die, they sink to the 
ocean floor where they decay. After scavengers 
have reduced or removed most of the tissue a 
bacterial mass engulfs the skeleton. Animals 
then colonize this unusual habitat where 
metabolic pathways are similar to those of 
hydrothermal vent organisms. Craig has 
investigated skeletons at various geographical 
locations and estimates there is one whale 
skeleton every 200 km on the ocean floor. 
Faunal density estimates on the skeletons are 
140 species per square meter. He has 
discovered that most of the species are unique 
to whale skeletons and are not found in other 
habitats. It was fortuitous that Leslie met him 
at MBARI, because not only did he give her 
some polychaete specimens to examine, but he 
will be depositing more polychaetes in the LA 
County Museum collections in the future. 
We were all fortunate to be able to look at one 
of Craig’s polychaete specimens at the 
meeting. It was unlike anything we had seen 
before, with some characteristics of 
phyllodocids, but probably in a new family. 
(This specimen had very small head 
appendages, 2 small palps and 2 small filiform 
antennae. The setae were beautiful and unique; 
being composite and chambered). Leslie 
described how these worms attach themselves 
to the skeleton and hang down in the water 
column. No one knows yet how these worms 
feed or what they eat. We hope to be able to 
look at more of these “whale skeleton worms” 
in the future. 
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