There are 4 jobs to processing: the anesthesiologist, the marker, photos, and data.
1. Two fish at a time get put in a chemical that puts them to sleep. This is a very important job because it dictates the speed of the entire process. They cant be in the liquid too long otherwise they die… and they have to be asleep by the time the next step is ready for them so that person isn’t waiting for them to fall asleep. This person is also in charge of moving around the tanks and making sure every fish ends up where it is supposed to end up. This was my first job. It was previously called the “fish bitch” but the scrippsie in me could not handle that name so I changed it to take after my wonderful sister and it actually stuck!
2. So after the anesthesiologist has knocked the guppy out, it gets passed to the Marker. (By the way, we cant handle the fish by hand because it is too rough on their scales so we must use plastic spoons with holes in them and other tools to move them around) The marker has a microscope and looks at the fish. If it has already been marked they read the mark to the data person. If it has not been caught before they give it a tattoo. The tattoo it a colorful plastic liquid that is injected just under the skin in a streak along its back, two for each fish. I have done this on practice fish but not real fish until I have practiced enough that they are sure I will not kill one of the study fish. And while I have not yet killed a fish, I still need some practice… these are tiny fish.
They also take scales from each fish to be analyzed in the lab to form a family tree of all the guppies caught. And they weigh each fish too.
3. The data person receives and records the information read out by the marker on long lists from the previous month (150 pages) with all the fish that have been tagged, matching recaught fish to old fish and recording new fish. I do not prefer this job. It’s hard for me to listen and remember the tags as I'm flipping through the pages. Silly I know but I get distracted and 2pink7green becomes all kinds of wrong combinations.
4 I like being the photographer. The photographer takes the fish from the scale (often relaying that info to the data person) and lays the hopefully still asleep fish on a white board. With a small paintbrush I align the fish to be straight and flat and then splay its tail fin out flat to see it all. The males are the best cause you get to see all their pretty colors and patterns. Sometimes when it’s the first time a fish has been caught it gets a “sexy picture.” This is when all the fins must be brushed out so you can see them instead of sleek along their body. Back in California someone uses the pictures to measure the fins and other morphological characteristics. Then, I take a picture with a really nice camera and dump them into a tank to recover. Sometime if they don’t wake up immediately you have to bubble them with the bubbles which seems to wake them up faster… I call it tickling them!
And that’s it! Very little thought goes into the whole process but we switch music picks and chat and goof the whole time. And things get really goofy when you have been processing for many hours straight. I have been laughing so hard.
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