Threespine stickleback pretending to be barracuda.
These guys were commisioned by fellow Flickerite Frenquency to commemorate the end of his PhD studies of this fish species. He studied the evolutionary loss of pelvic spines and was able to switch the relevant genes back on, producing fish with one or both perlvic spines. The thesis title was “The Genomic Basis of Parallel Evolution in Three-spined Sticklebacks”.
Like the other fish I have crafted for the FishNet project at Harbourfront in 2008, these are made of silver lame fabric and stuffed with polyester, coloured up with acrylic paint and markers, with fins made of recycled plastic and metal spines and side armour plates from a can of anchovies.
On these fish the eyes are made from clear rubber stick on nubs, designed to be little non-slide feet on lamps, electronics, etc.
I used a leather punch to cut the black iris opening out of a plastic bag of frozen berries and sandwiched that between the rubber nub and some silver foil.
Crazy glue was used throughout, as nothing else seems to stick metal (spines and plates) and food container plastic (the fins) to fabric (the body), certainly nothing environmentally friendly or non-toxic that I tried.
More photos can be had in the Flickr set.