There are about 25,000 known fish types in the world, and University of Washington (UW) biology professor Adam Summers wants to catch all of them — on film that is.
According to Summers, he's always been interested in studying different fish ever since he was young. His fascination of the aquatic animals has even led him to pursue a career as a biologist at UW's School of Aquatic and Fisheries Sciences.
As of the moment, one of his primary goals is to create one of the largest clearinghouses of fish computed tomography (CT) scans in the world, where fellow scientists can find various information, such as the morphology, or structure, of different species.
To realize his goal, Summers has installed a CT scanner at UW's research facility in Friday Harbor so that he and his colleagues can scan and record images of every known fish digitally. They have digitized more than 500 fish species so far, but they plan to add thousands more to their database. They also invite other researchers to make their own scans to help build up the collection.
Summers describes his work as mainly focusing on the field of biomechanics, or more specifically in biomimetics.
He intends to use his understanding of how the body of animals functions under certain conditions so that he could develop technologies that can be used to solve technical problems. This eventually drew him to examine the skeletal structure of fish.
"One of the very, very useful things is to understand exactly what the skeleton looks like. It is shockingly complex," Summers said.
"Your skull is just a few bones. Fish skulls are dozens and dozens of bones."
Throughout the years, Summers was able to develop various techniques that have allowed him to scan multiple fish specimens. This helped him cut down the 50-year expected completion time of his project to just only a few years.
The scans have allowed Summers to find out more about certain actions that animals do. One such example is how creatures made mostly of cartilage for skeleton are able to crush their prey such as mussels and snails. He discovered that cartilage in these animals contain mineralized tissue.
Summers has also made it a point to provide fellow scientists with access to their fish scan database. While CT scans can easily run for about $500 to $2,000 for each session, the UW service is available free of charge. Summers said this is to prevent any overlaps in research.
"Every aspect of fish is absolutely fascinating," Summers pointed out.
"It has just an unbelievable amount of information there to be picked out."
