"Ocean Etiquette – Table Manners"
by Mary Jane Schramm, Freelance Writer, Naturalist
Chomping, slurping, nibbling, gulping. If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, should table manners be judged that way, too? Well, maybe situationally. Among our species, the art of dining is not just a function; it is an integral part of our cultural identities and cuisines, capable of yielding the most marvelous of gustatory delights. We’ve devised endless ways to prepare food, and a variety of ways to deliver it to our appreciative palates. We manipulate our food - our prey - using tools that vary in complexity but whose basic configuration is dictated by the precept, Form Follows Function. Spoons or straws (non-plastic) for liquids, chopsticks or forks for morsels, aided by knives to tackle larger pieces. We may surreptitiously wield bits of bread to round up the last savory bits from our plates, but in some cultures, as in my former Indian home, we dined daintily with fingertips only; cutlery was relegated to the kitchen.
California Cuisine: Our California Current Ecosystem serves up some of the world’s most diverse and abundant seafood imaginable, which contributes significantly to our economy, our sustenance, and our aesthetic enjoyment, formal and informal. The marine creatures that comprise the marine food web enjoy their own fashions in dining, too. Some examples:
Killer Cuisine: For resident aka fish-eating killer whales (Orcinus orca) that feed mainly on salmon, “dinnertime” may take over half their day and is work intensive. Unlike other fish, salmon do not travel in schools, so killer whales must painstakingly hunt one at a time, swallowing prey whole or shaking it into manageable pieces. Food-sharing sometimes occurs with close matrilineal (maternal) relatives, especially siblings and offspring. The family matriarchs, interestingly, favor adult sons with these gifts. This may help foster family and social cohesiveness among their highly complex killer whale culture.
Awesome and Jawsome: White sharks, Carcharodon carcharias, despite their fierce reputation, maintain their own etiquette. Solitary hunters, they don’t generally engage in ‘feeding frenzies’ associated with pack-hunting sharks. Biologists at the Farallon Islands have observed several white sharks surrounding a single pinniped (seal or seal lion) kill. They maintained a cautious distance while the dominant shark fed, sometimes assuming an arched-back posture with downward pointing pectoral fins (think Arnold Schwarznegger, circa 1970s) to signal bad-assedness. One researcher described the scenario as “almost dignified.”
“Love” At First Bite: High marks for innovation go to the giant pacific octopus (Enteroctopus dofleini) when approaching hard-shell prey like a Dungeness crab. Its first bite delivers a neurotoxin to paralyze it, then locks it in an embrace and injects a tissue-dissolving enzyme that turns flesh into a puree.The octopus then licks and sucks out the delectable crabmeat milkshake. Watch GPO “Ruben” enjoy his dinner at https://youtu.be/TZeeszGQqTg.
Slurpees: Leatherback sea turtles, Dermochelys coriacea, forage here each spring and summer, some swimming over 10,000 miles a year between Indonesian nesting and California foraging grounds to dine on jellies. They have a special predilection for brown sea nettles – despite the jellies’ stinging cells. The turtles lack teeth but their zig-zag beaks grasp and pull the jellies into mouths and throats lined with backward-pointing pappillae, spinelike structures that guide them down an extremely-long esophagus for leisurely digestion - a conveyor belt of food. See a leatherback closeup at https://youtu.be/085yu73yhAY.
Hold the Anchovies: Tufted puffins (Fratercula cirrhata) dive deep for dinner, often targeting dense schools of ‘baitfish’ – anchovies, sardines, and juvenile rockfish. When working a ‘baitball’, a puffin can pick off one fish after another in rapid-fire sequence, holding each crosswise in its beak. Their secret is an expandable hinged jaw, and a mouth filled with backward-pointing spines known as denticles. The puffin can grab more fish while securing its previous catch. One Tufted puffin in Alaska managed to hold 29 at once!
Learn More: Killer whales sharing prey at
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0003347216000737
Leatherback turtles conservation update: California Protects Leatherback Sea Turtles as Endangered - Center for Biological Diversity
Photo Credits:
Top: Zigzag 'beak' grasps slippery jellies. photo: NOAA
Top Left: White shark feeds on whale carcass. Photo: Stellwagen Bank NMS
Above Left: Giant Pacific octopus, resting and digesting. Photo: NOAA
Above Center: Atlantic puffin with a beakful of fish (photo by Steve Garvie, Creative Commons license on Flickr)
