Comment on Washington scientist launches effort to digitize all fish

Washington scientist launches effort to digitize all fish

SEATTLE (AP) — University of Washington biology professor Adam Summers no longer has to coax hospital staff to use their CT scanners so he can visualize the inner structures of sting ray and other fish. Last fall, he installed a small computed tomography, or CT, scanner at the UW's Friday Harbor Laboratories on San Juan Island in Washington state and launched an ambitious project to scan and digitize all of more than 25,000 species in the world. Summers recalled how as a graduate student 17 years ago he bribed a hospital technician with Snickers bars to scan large sting rays in its CT scanner. [...] he wanted to know how an animal with a skeleton composed of cartilage could do such "a crazy thing" as crush hard prey, such as snails and mussels. The scanner, about the size of two dorm refrigerators, is housed at the UW's marine lab on Friday Harbor, 80 miles north of Seattle, where Summers is associate director and a professor of biology and aquatic and fishery sciences. Malorie Hayes, a graduate student at Auburn University, took Summers up on his offer to use the scanner after hearing him talk about the project at a recent conference.

 

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