Environment

Rare Albino Ratfish Discovered

by ScienceDave | September 24, 2007 at 09:55 pm

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When one thinks of a ratfish, they likely picture in their mind's eye a gnarly, scrawly looking fish, fighting over a old pizza crusts (or whatever the underwater equivalent is) and scurrying under the legs of passer-bys.

On the contrary, the skin of this rare sight resembles that of a polished pearl - a gleaming white surface covering its slimey cold flesh, with light emerald eyes staring back at you as its mouth opens and shuts, a wet smacking of its lips.

But what causes albinism, and why are people so intrigued by it? I think everyone can remember the first time they met someone with albinism. There was a kid who lived a few blocks from the street I grew up on with albinism, his puffy white eyebrows sat atop the blood-lined skin above his nearly colourless eyes.

Like most human conditions, you can blame albinism on genes. Albinos lack one or more of a variety of genes involved in melanin production, a pigment in your skin, eyes, and hair that absorbs UB light. The more melanin your body is intrinsically able to produce, the better off you are at fending off skin cancer. In humans, albinism occurs one in every 18,000 people [source], but it seems such fish are rarer...

"I've seen tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of ratfish in my career, and have not seen a completely albino one before," says Wayne Palsson, a Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife biologist who studies groundfish populations in Puget Sound. "I've seen lightly colored or partially albino ratfish but never completely albino." Palsson says the only other pure albino marine organism of any kind that he's seen in Puget Sound was a sea cucumber collected near UW's Friday Harbor Laboratories in the '90s.