The ‘Humming Toadfish’
a very ugly fish that sings and can flash in the dark.
The 'Humming Toadfish' or 'California Canary Fish' is an ugly type of 'Midshipman Fish' with redeeming features. He can sing at night and flash lights under his head.
There are about 15 species of Midshipman Fish of the Genus Porichthys, but this article is about only one of them: the ‘Humming Toadfish’, ‘California Canary Fish’, ‘Plainfin Midshipman’ or Porichthys notatus, which lives along the West Coast of America. This one makes a noise like a motor-boat at night, and can keep people awake when he is feeling amorous in the spring. Humming Toadfish come up onto the shore when they are breeding, and the male makes a little nest under a rock – he ‘hums’(by vibrating his swim-bladder) to attract lady-friends.
The Humming Toadfish is quite big, upto a foot long, and exceptionally ugly and boring to look at. He is a drab brownish on top, pale below and shaped rather like a tadpole. Nasty-looking, and also venomous. The dorsal fins hold a mild poison, and the pain from a ‘sting’ can last for 15 minutes. But the ‘humming’ makes him interesting, and so does the fact that he (and she) can switch on four lights underneath their heads. They do this during courtship and when they are scared. It also helps camouflage them in dim light, since their silhouette can no longer be seen from below.
Bioluminescence is common in the sea, and this Midshipman gets the necessary raw materials from his diet. Some of the crustaceans he eats contain vargulin, a type of luciferin. (Over in Japan the Sea-firefly Vargula higendorfii is a good example of a well-researched crustacean - an ostracod - that can light-up the sea.) The Midshipman uses his ‘sound and light’ display to attract females to his little nest, but he doesn’t only attract the females. ‘Sneaky’ males - the same size as females- will also be lurking nearby. They either rush in and try to fertilise some of the eggs the female deposits or simply wait outside and waft their sperm into the nest. The poor old male then wears himself out caring for the young and usually soon dies. Sneaky males can live for several years – is their no justice?
The name ‘Midshipman Fish’ comes from the four ‘lights’ under the head. They are said to look like the buttons on the uniform sleeve of a Midshipman in the Royal Navy (UK). Some say that these buttons were put on the Midshipman’s uniform to stop him wiping his nose on his sleeve. Whether that is true or not the slang for a Midshipman in the Royal Navy is still ‘snotty’!
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