Whale shark feeding in Holbox, Mexico. JEB cover shot (2011). Photo by Louise Murray.

You may know that the world's largest living animal, the blue whale, is a filter-feeder, but did you know that the two largest fish in the ocean are also filter feeders? My goal is to understand how these incredibly large group of fishes (ranging from 1 meter up to 20 meters, that's 60ft!) filter out some of the smallest animals in the ocean (zooplankton 0.5-3mm)? As you might expect, this is rather difficult to do in a laboratory.

My motivation is to understand the mechanisms used by filter-feeding fishes to capture their prey.  These fishes include some of the most well known species of sharks and rays including: whale sharks, basking sharks, the elusive mega mouth shark, manta rays, and the devil rays. My research uses a blend of laboratory and field techniques including: 1) physical modeling using 3-D printing,  2) CT scans, 3) functional morphology, 4) histology, 5) microscopy (compound and Scanning Electron), and 6) satellite tracking using Sattelite Pop-off Archival Tags and live feeding data from videography.