NEW EXHIBIT COMING TO GULF SPECIMEN
By JACK RUDLOE Of Gulf Specimen
Johnny Nelson of Aquila Seafood in Bon Secour, Alabama and owner of the 110 foot trawler Our Mother gave Gulf Specimen Marine Lab and Aquarium the best Christmas present ever. On December 22, 2022 he donated eleven 50 pound bags of frozen bycatch from the Royal Red shrimp bottoms for our forthcoming Picklearium exhibit. Normally they wouldn’t fish those bottoms until January, but he told the captain to leave the white shrimp shallows and make a four hour drag for us in 220 fathoms. Our staff felt like kids on Christmas morning as they hurried out to our new classroom pavilion and excitedly started thawing the first bag of frozen deep sea creatures they had never seen before. There were jet black, cigar sized sharks with big green eyes and spikes on their backs, armored orange sea robins, and a large squid with tentacles covered with oversized suckers. But the biggest eye catcher was the seven foot snake eel, Ophichthus rex, with a bulldog head and large toothy jaws, found only in the depths of the northern Gulf of Mexico. There is such a variety and volume in the catch that it will take months to sort and identify all the specimens.
This is becoming a tradition. In 1976 we worked with Johnny’s father Peter Nelson on another collecting expedition. On behalf of the New York Aquarium, we chartered his royal red shrimp boat, Norma Yvonne, to drag for the world’s largest isopod, Bathynomus giganteus. This bizarre creature, also known as Giant Sea Roach, looked like something out of a science fiction movie, with a segmented body, slanted eyes and wicked claws. Instantly, it made history; it took the nation by storm and was front-page news in the New York Times. All the wire services picked it up and it was shown on Good Morning America. Jack Rudloe’s account of the expedition was published in Sports Illustrated and Reader’s Digest.
We were fortunate to find the Nelson’s, one of the few shrimping families that have rigged their trawlers to catch the succulent royal red shrimp from the icy dark depths. Now decades later, Aquila Seafood is helping Gulf Specimen with a new display of unique wonders of the deep. Our Picklearium will showcase carefully preserved creatures from the depths of the Gulf of Mexico which cannot survive in an unpressurized aquarium.
On our first expedition, identifying deep sea creatures was almost impossible. But deep sea submersibles and oil exploration have changed that. Dr. Dean Grubbs of the FSU Marine Laboratory has offered his expertise in identifying the catch. For more than a decade, he has been studying the sharks, bony fishes, and other creatures that inhabit deep-sea regions of the Gulf on FSU’s research vessel, Apalachee. As the eleven grab bags of creatures thaw out, he will have the opportunity to add to his collections and select an array of specimens for Dr. Gavin Naylor of the University of Florida Museum in Gainesville for his genetic study of deep sea sharks.
At least one 50 gallon drum of preserved specimens will go to the renowned artist, Brandon Balangee, who is consulting on Gulf Specimen’s new Picklearium exhibit. In 2012 he used dozens of preserved deep water specimens from the 1976 expedition in his famous exhibit “Collapse” to demonstrate the horrific impacts of the Deep Water Horizon BP oil spill, listing Jack Rudloe, President of Gulf Specimen Marine Lab and Aquarium as one of artists in his creation.
Jack Rudloe is the president and founder of Gulf Specimen Marine Lab in Panacea.