The Sawfish are Coming!

On October 17th the sawfish are coming to Gonzaga University. The Current Archives Lab, under the direction of Dr. Jens Hegg, has been planning for this moment over the last two months, presenting our research and then making a careful plan for when they arrive. Now that the plan has been set in motion all that is left to do is wait…

You see, October 17th is International Sawfish Day, a day to celebrate sawfish conservation and get the word out about these incredible critters. The lab has planned a sawfish extravaganza in the student union building with sawfish education materials, 2 sawfish rostra from the research collection, and prizes! And those prizes are the sawfish whose arrival we are waiting for.

Undergraduate researchers in the Current Archives Lab at Gonzaga University presenting their research posters on the use of chemistry and internal structure to understand sawfish life-history. From left; Kevin Cox, Brad Vega, Linh Truong, Maddie George. Photo © Jens Hegg

We’ve had thirty articulated sawfish toys 3D printed at the campus makers lab and we’re waiting on the last of them to arrive. They’ll be used as prizes for those who can answer questions about sawfish conservation and biology during our sawfish day celebration. We’ll also be giving away SOSF merch and answering questions about our research to anyone interested in stopping by.

3D printed sawfish toys will be given out as prizes during the Current Archives Lab celebration of International Sawfish Day at the Gonzaga student union on October 17th. Photo © Jens Hegg

The students have been working hard this semester to write up their summer research. That culminated in a poster presentation at the Fall Family Weekend Research Showcase. We’ve been working hard to analyse the full dataset of rostral tooth chemistry from our Brazilian sawfish samples, as well as a second project using MicroCT to understand the internal structure of rostral teeth. We’re closing in on the goal and aiming to submit two manuscripts for peer-reviewed publication this year, and a third next year.

So, wherever you are, don’t forget that the sawfish are coming on October 17th. Make sure you celebrate International Sawfish day this Friday!

Project

Jens is unlocking information about how and where largetooth sawfish spend their lives through the chemistry of their teeth. The long, toothed rostrum for which sawfish are named might hold some answers about where a sawfish grew up, where it moved, how fast it grew during each period of life, and how its place in the food web changed as it grew. That’s because rostral teeth lay down chemical traces throughout a sawfish’s life. The low numbers of living sawfish mean that Jens is looking at ways to use historical specimens in museums to develop insight into the fine details of the lives of sawfish.

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