Ask the curator

Interview with curator Rachel Ball

Transcript

Hi, my name is Rachel Ball and I'm the Aquarium Curator at World Museum in Liverpool. Today I'm going to be telling you a bit about the fish that we have here - in particular my favourite fish - and I'm going to be answering some of your questions. So if you come with me behind the scenes, I'll show you around!

As aquarists we are responsible for the upkeep of the aquarium gallery. In other words, we are responsible for the lives of all the animals that we look after. So not only the animals that you see in the gallery, we also have lots behind the scenes as well. If you've seen the gallery, you'll know we have tropical animals based on areas of the Indo-West Pacific, such as Australia, Fiji, Indonesia and places like that. The other half of the gallery is temperate or native marine British animals based on local areas such as Hilbre Island and Anglesey.

The room we're in now is one of our tropical fish rooms or tropical quarantine rooms. This room is used for quarantining tropical animals before they go on display. So we'd keep animals here for about three to four weeks where we can closely monitor them and make sure they have no diseases that can be transferred to animals in the gallery. It's also used as a bit of a fish hospital, so if an animal is not doing too well on display it would come out of the gallery and into here where we can isolate it and either treat it or give it a bit of TLC.

Though we have quite a lot of different animals here, my main interest is in sharks and rays, which are cartilaginous fish. I've carried out a lot of research into these animals and research is really my specialty in the aquarium. I'm currently involved in a project called RayWatch, which aims to assess the population of local rays in the Mersey - particularly Thornback Rays. We are actually tagging these animals - along with local anglers - to establish their movements, which will hopefully lead to some better management for them.

So now I'm going to answer some of the questions that you've sent in about some of the animals we have here in the aquarium. I believe the first one is about where we get the animals from and what happens when we breed animals - where might they go afterwards. Well we're fairly committed to as much as possible only collecting animals from other aquariums or from captive bred populations. So a large amount of our animals come from breeding programs from within the UK. When we breed them here, they are either displayed here or they are sent onto other aquariums.

The next question was about PH and the PH that different fish can tolerate and what they can be found breeding in, which is quite interesting. It really depends on the fish and whereabouts in the world they're found. For marine fish, it means they tend to prefer a higher PH, around 8. All of the fish that we keep here at the museum are marine fish and their PH is around 8.1 or 8.2. In terms of freshwater fish, they prefer quite a different range depending on where they're from in the wild. In the Amazon for example, they have quite an acidic PH, so that's around 6 or 6.5. Whereas in places like Lake Tanganyika in Africa it can be as high as 8, even though it's fresh water. In terms of the extremes that they can tolerate, Amazon fish have been found in extremes like 3 - as low as that in terms of PH, very acidic. When it comes to breeding it's most likely that they'll migrate out of those areas to somewhere more neutral where they can actually breed. But they can actually tolerate quite a huge range in the Amazon.

The last question referred to the sorts of animals I'd like to have in the aquarium if we could, that we don't already have. So I think something that would be great to have here would be an octopus, or at least a member of the cephalopod family, maybe squid or octopus. I think octopus are particularly interesting because they are invertebrates but they are incredibly intelligent. So I think it would be quite interesting for people to witness how these animals can solve puzzles and break into feeding jars, that kind of thing. They would demonstrate their intelligence and I think this would be something that people would find quite fascinating to watch.

My favourite animals here in the aquarium are the native rays. We have three different species; small rays, Thornback Rays and one Undulate Ray. I think they're really beautiful animals and they're interesting in the way that they move and the way that they behave. But what I think what has attracted me to them the most is the fact that they are so vulnerable. They are arguably the most vulnerable of all exploited marine fish - they are not really being given the chance to reach sexual maturity. Particularly around the UK, they are vulnerable to bottom trawlers, particularly as by-catch, for more valuable fish like Plaice and Sole. So they do face a bit of an uphill struggle to reach sexual maturity and reproduce themselves, so they are very vulnerable.

Ok, so thanks for your questions! Remember you can come and see us at the aquarium anytime and see the rays and any of the other animals. It's free and it's open from 10am - 5pm, seven days a week. As far as the rays are concerned, you do have the opportunity to support our project in the Mersey, tagging Thornback Rays. If you look up RayWatch on our website you will see you can sponsor a ray, which you can name, and you will get updates on that ray throughout the year. It will tremendously help our project so if you're interested in rays, please help our conservation effort, it will be much appreciated. Thanks very much!