I’m obsessed with fish that clean other fish: they remember their clients, much like a hairdresser | Fishing industry

I I was in my fifties when I first realized that the cleaner was present, when I met Fisher who sold it to the Scottish salmon farms. Every year, all over the world, these farms are used More than 60 million Cleaning fish for dining – or “clean” – of parasites from other fish. But the natural habitats of cleaned fish are coral reefs.

On coral reefs, in each fish there are cleaner customers who visit them to remove their parasites – sometimes much larger than fish or predators such as sharks and radiation. I was fascinated by the discovery of the cleaners that would gently massage these customers and their fins and make sure they are comfortable.

Some fish seem to feel very spoiled by cleaner fish, and they repeatedly return to more – an Australian study found that some will visit a cleaner fish up 144 times a dayOn average. There is no way these fish does only to get rid of parasites, so one can only assume that they are also doing it for fun.

Sometimes, cleaner fish will pay their customers as if they were saying: This is what I want to do. Then their customers – even huge fish such as hamper – will spread their fins or open their mouths, and the cleaner fish will go inside, which I find unusual.

Hamour fish will protect cleaner fish from predators by closing their mouth with a cleaner inside. Then the Hamour will open its mouth enough until the cleaner escapes to a place to hide.

Cleansing fish will sometimes localize their customers, to obtain mucus from fish, which we believe have nutritional value. But they have to be careful, because they may lose potential customers who witness this behavior.

Although every cleaner can get it About 2000 customers per dayIt is smart enough to distinguish between these clients, get to know them and remember their recent interaction with them, such as the hairdresser. They tend to be more cooperative with customers near their home domain, because they are more likely to confront them again.

It seems as if they were familiar with their reputation and know that if they deceive someone, they will not return. It also tends to give predators more than most customers.

Cleaning fish is increasingly searched by salmon farms because they remove sea lice and are seen as the biological alternative to anti -equestrian chemical treatments. This has led to a rapid rise in their wild capture and the subsequent release in salmon farms.

I carry a campaign to protect the legal protection of these fish, because no one has made an appropriate evaluation of the effect of cleaner fish from the Scottish coral reefs or whether the coral reef environment will remain alive if we continue to remove them.

Also, many farms will kill their cleaner fish after a production cycle on salmon, to stop the spread of infection. I find it annoyed by sacrificing these very courageous and smart creatures, which are very social and the implementation of good work on coral reefs, to improve the well -being of another fish that is produced commercially. It is a very wasteless and inhuman practice – and one day I hope to end it.