I got to dissect a particularly neat species today - the sabertooth, Evermannella balbo. I haven’t got any great photos of them in the lab (freezer burn is no friend to the deep pelagic beasties) but I’m so excited to have a half dozen of these beautiful freakazoids in my PhD dataset!

Psych, I actually dissected three species of eel today - N. ingolfianus, Serrivomer beanii, and two bizarrely long Nemichthys scolopaceus. Also! A black scabbardfish, which is the 600th individual fish in my dataset 💪🫡🥳🎉🐠🐟🐠🐟🐠

I hope we all enjoy the fact that the two known species of duckbill eel (Nessorhamphus) are named after the two pioneering Danish deep-sea research ships, the Dana and the Ingolf (N. danae and N. ingolfianus respectively). Anyway no points for guessing what I'm dissecting today.

Fucked up (but tragically Critically Endangered) fish I just learned about (Dwarf Sturgeon/Pseudoscaphirhynchus hermanni). Can't believe they managed to make a sturgeon weirder.

Happy Hallowe’en

Film 31 for #31For31. Closed off this year with another big film I’d never seen before. Really really good! There’s some SFX in there I have no idea how they did them, and 1970s San Francisco looks soooo cool.

Film 30 for #31For31. Don’t really know what to think about this one - on the face of things, an abhorrently offensive film, but wrapped in such a strange camp energy you can’t help but smile. Ricky is one of the funniest characters ever put on screen.

Film 29 for #31For31. Great film to not pay much attention to.

Film 28 for #31For31 - would’ve been fun to watch in March 2020

Film 27 for #31For31 - some really fun performances in this one

Film 26 for #31For31 - cannot go an October without watching this one, theres a couple of moments that always get under my skin.

Film 25 of #31For31 - oh my god, so good. So, so fucking good. 75 minutes in this takes such a hard turn into a direction of horror you cannot expect, and makes you feel sick and anxious until it absolutely sticks the landing in a way that makes the mouth drop.

Film 24 of #31For31 - cool to get an insight into Sami folklore, the setting really lends itself to these wonderful dark, sweeping vistas.

Film 23 of #31For31, one of the best films ever made. Feels like sour milk tastes and leaves you completely hollowed out and exhausted. I wasn’t gonna watch this month but had to find it for a friend and couldn’t resist.

Film 22 for #31for31 - I quite like having these as a fixture each year, they’re never fantastic but fun and cozy.

Recently I’ve been combing through newspapers from a hundred years ago, and in the spirit of the season (and in the spirit of procrastination) I’ve assembled a little gallery of Halloween advertisements from 1925 on my site: dansinker.com/posts/202…

Call out for scientists! 👇🚨 We are still looking for scientists who would like to work on a deep sea art project. A view artists are still looking for a teammate to create gorgous art and to celebrate the deep sea. 🦑 🐟 🐡 🐙 🦀 #SundayFishSketch

Also if you go look up this species on Wikipedia you might see a nicer photo of this individual :^]

She’s not necessarily a looker but this wonderful Melanonus arrowtail is rather special to me - she’s fish #500 of my PhD dataset 🫨🎉🥳 Arrowtails are a super weird and fairly uncommon little group, closely related to hakes - it’s such a privilege to have a couple to dissect!

Film 21 for #31For31. You ever see Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace?

Film 20 for #31For31. Venice has gotta be the best city to do foot chases on right?

Film 19 for #31For31. Obviously one of the greatest films ever made, this is the first time I’ve ever really watched it with my full attention and it kicks ass!

Film 18 for #31For31. Very fun to just cover a fairly standard found footage with a bunch of Halloween decorations.

Film 17 for #31for31. Really liked this, lots of opportunities to point at the screen and go “holy shit it’s Dr Who!”

Film 16 for #31for31. Finally filling in a big hole in my horror education - I don’t find Freddy scary but I liked the bit where the guy got shredded.

Film 15 for #31for31 - got to introduce this to a bunch of PhD students that hadn’t seen it before which was just a delightful experience. Some of the most beautiful lens flares of all time.

Film 14 for #31for31. Fine.

Film 13 for #31for31. Indy is distractingly cute but I was a little dissatisfied with the ending.

Film 12 for #31for31. I love anything that will introduce children to the concept of pitchfork-wielding peasants and crazed rural vicars.

Film 11 for #31for31. Elle Fanning is goated.

Film 10 for #31for31 - didn’t mean to double up on the werewolves but really liked this one, loved how seedy the opening is

Film 9 for #31for31. Really comfy to me, made me very nostalgic for A-level English

Ohhh, THAT'S why they call it a bonefish

New paper on deep-sea fish diversity out now in @sse-evolution.bsky.social, with @cmartinez.bsky.social and @sarahtfried.bsky.social academic.oup.com/evolut/advan...

Still nuts that I get to go here for work

Film 8 for #31For31 - maybe it’s the dreamlike atmosphere, maybe it’s the fact I washed this after work on a Thursday, but either way this was a great film to basically fall asleep to.

Film 7 of #31For31 was Hellraiser III. There’s a bit in this where a 1991 CGI Pinhead face made out of water kills a girl. Best film ever made.

Film 6 for #31For31 was Dark Skies. I have nothing else to say about it.

Film 5 for #31For31 was Evil Dead II. I wish Raimi was one of my guys but I just don’t think he is.

Film 4 for #31For31 was Psycho Goreman, charming enough

Paracanthopterygians are such an odd group. It’s just cods and then a bunch of relatively low-diversity freakazoid families.

This evenings “fish I can’t stop looking at” is the tinselfish (Grammicolepis) - look at this fella. What’s his deal.

Had the absolute pleasure of mounting and sampling some greater argentine (Argentina silus) otoliths today - look how beautiful they are! And so easy to age! These specimens were dissected at sea around 1AM, after a full-day migraine - gratifying to have them be nice samples!

This was supposed to be the #SundayFishSketch ... The bumby snailfish is refusing to get painted at the moment :/ ... I may return to it later or try again.

Now this is what it’s all about!! Middle one looks almost like a ghost shark of some kind? Also, who’d have thought that an angular roughshark would ever look normal!

Film 3 for #31For31 was Possessor - really glad I finally got to see this, I’m excited to watch Infinity Pool at some point

Second film for #31For31 was the new Fear Street flick. Fine enough.

Something some of you may not know is that every October I try and watch 31 horror films in 31 days #31For31 Kicked it off last night with Peter Jackson’s glooorious splatterfest Dead Alive (1991), a film that had me grinning from ear to ear for about half an hour straight. What a treat!

"After the fall of the Roman Empire, elephants virtually disappeared from Western Europe. Since there was no real knowledge of how the animal looked, illustrators had to rely on oral and written transmissions to morphologically reconstruct the elephant" www.uliwestphal.de/elephas-anth...

Wrote up a little self-promo profile for DSBSoc :^] Feel free to give it a read to find out a little more about what I actually do & how I ended up with the best PhD project in the world!