Renowned Researcher Shares Survival Strategies of Open Water Fishes

Date: February 5, 2009
Contact: Yvonne Menard, 805-658-5725

During the February “From Shore to Sea” lectures Dr. Milton Love, with University of California Santa Barbara’s Marine Science Institute, will provide insights on how fish adapt in the open ocean environment including how rockfish settle at oil platforms.

From sharks to salmon, from sardines to shortbelly rockfish, the fishes that occupy the water column of the Santa Barbara Channel form an important part of the ocean food web.  The open waters can be a difficult place for sharks and fishes to survive due to slow maturity, predation, and human impacts. Love will also discuss the adaptations that pelagic sharks and fishes use to survive in this fluid and transparent environment, including strategies to maintain buoyancy and defenses to ward off predation. 

Love, a research biologist, has conducted research on numerous economically important marine fishes in the northeast Pacific, including over 30 years of work on rockfishes.  His most recent book is The Rockfishes of the Northeast Pacific.

The “From Shore to Sea” lecture series is jointly sponsored by Channel Islands National Park and Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary with generous support from Santa Barbara Maritime Museum. The purpose of the series is to further the understanding of current research on the Channel Islands and surrounding waters. The lectures occur at
7:00 p.m. on Tuesday, February 10, 2009, at Santa Barbara Maritime Museum, 113 Harbor Way in the Santa Barbara Harbor and Wednesday, February 11, 2009, at the Channel Islands National Park Robert J. Lagomarsino Visitor Center, 1901 Spinnaker Drive in the Ventura Harbor. The programs are free and open to the public.