Expert: Walter Hintz - 12/14/2006

Question
hello my name is Elizabeth  and I'm 12 years old and I'm doing a project in gifted on ocean animals i am supposed to interview someone on the topic. and so i was wondering if you would be willing to answer a few questions i have.

  1st- about how many different species of fish are in the pacific ocean?
2nd-i want to become a marine bio. and i wanted to know if i succeed at becoming one how much time and how often would i get to be in the ocean?
3rd-I've found some pretty normal fish on the Internet but nothing out of the ordinary is there any fish you think are very exotic in the pacific ocean?
         thank you for your time Elizabeth

Answer
Hi Elizabeth;
  There are over 20,000 known species of fishes in the ocean but there are probably a lot that have not been discovered yet.
   I cannot tell you how much time you would spend in the ocean because there are many different jobs that marine biologists do.
 I have always been fascinated by the AnglerFish.  My second choice would be the electric eel.

 By the way you might like to know this.  When you are talking about a lot of fish all the same species the plural is "fish" but when there is more than one species the pleural is "fishes"

Here is a website you might enjoy
www.aquahobby.com/e_marine.php