Downriver from New Orleans, behind heavy doors in grass-covered bunkers that stored artillery during World War II, are millions of dead fish.
They’re preserved and cataloged in rows of glass jars, each one a time capsule, a specimen pulled from a particular place on a particular day, labeled so future scientists can return to the exact moment it was collected. Together, these jars form the Royal D. Suttkus Fish Collection, a kind of morbid library of the Gulf’s fish life.
“It’s the world’s largest collection of post-larval preserved fishes,” said Brian Sidlauskas, the director of the Tulane University Biological Diversity Institute, or TUBRI, and the curator of the fish collection. “We’re getting ready to add another 3 million specimens.”
At a moment when many research institutions are losing funding, shrinking storage and closing collections, Tulane is expanding this one. Scientists say these “libraries” of preserved animals have become more valuable in an era of rapid environmental change…