Bigscale Pomfret story
Sources of inspiration come in many forms.  One day my diving buddy, Don Wert, called me on the phone and said that he saw the most unusual fish washed up on the beach at San Onofre surfing beach, not far from the nuclear power plant.  Always interested in fish, I inquired what kind was it.  Don had never seen any fish like this before.  It sounded like some kind of pompano, but I was unsure from just the verbal description.  Even though it was late at night, we drove down to San Onofre to look for this fish.  I had a number of my reference books with me to help in the identification.  After a considerable search, we finally found the "mystery fish" that had been lying on the sand.  Surfers had taken it up to a garden area and propped it against the base of a palm tree.  They had decorated it with an old cigar stogie between it's toothy jaws.  Seagulls had ravaged the carcass, removing eyes, viscera and gills.  Ants and maggots were well at work in the remains.  Needless to say, in the illumination of my flashlight, it was a hideous caricature of a unique specimen.  I brought out the identification books.  I found it to be a BIGSCALE POMFRET, Taractes longipinnis (Lowe).  According to John E. Fitch and Robert J. Lavenberg in Deep-Water Fishes of California, there had been only four of these fish found in California between Doheny Beach and Redondo Beach.  This was a rare specimen indeed!

Excitedly, I suggested to Don, that we take the specimen back so I could preserve it.  Don declined the suggestions since the decaying fish smelled so bad.  His wife would kill him if he contaminated her new car with this odor.  I had to concur, it did stink!

The next day, armed with several plastic bags and a shovel, I retrieved the specimen.  I was sure that this fish would make marine biological history because it was so rare.  After all, it was an El Nino year, many strange events were happening in California.  Back at my studio, I looked for my bottle of formaldehyde to start the preservation process.  I only had about one cup left.  This would never be enough.  I made a phone call to Orange County Chemical Supply to see if I could order more formaldehyde.  The salesman informed me that I could no longer purchase this carcinogenic chemical.  The State of California was trying to make the environment less toxic and polluted.  Now what was I supposed to do with this decaying, stinky fish?  My euphoria was rapidly vanishing.  I drove to the pharmacy and purchased 10 bottles of rubbing alcohol.  This would be a start in preservation of the rare, bigscale pomfret.

That evening, Don Wert and I sent an e-mail letter to the curator of marine vertebrates at Scripps Institute of Oceanography to inform him of the discovery of the bigscale pomfret on the beach at San Onofre.  I had to mention this fish was pretty well decomposed. The curator kindly thanked me for the news about this specimen and declined my offer of the actual fish.  They already had a good one in their permanent collection.  It looked like I was stuck with possession of the pomfret.
I now proudly display my bigscale pomfret upon the fence by my studio among other dried fish trophys.
Inspiration comes in many forms.               Stainless  Pompano