Ichthyology Department's Holiday Card Features Fish Skeleton, Alarms Recipients

The Department of Ichthyology at a major research university has received concerned phone calls from seventeen recipients of its annual holiday card, which features a high-resolution photograph of an articulated fish skeleton wearing a Santa hat, captioned 'Wishing You a Fin-tastic Holiday Season.' The card was designed by department administrator Phyllis Ventral, who selected the image — a museum-quality cleared-and-stained specimen of a largemouth bass (Micropterus salmoides) showing bone in vivid alizarin red and cartilage in alcian blue — from the department's research archives. 'I thought it was beautiful,' Ventral said. 'The staining technique produces these gorgeous colours. You can see every vertebra, every fin ray, every branchiostegal ray. It's like stained glass. The Santa hat was a nice touch.' Recipients disagreed. 'I opened the card and screamed,' reported the dean's executive assistant. 'It's a skeleton. Of a fish. Wearing a hat. My seven-year-old asked if the fish was dead, and I had to explain that yes, very much so, and also that it had been chemically processed to make its bones visible, which raised further questions I was not prepared to answer.' Another recipient, a colleague in the English department, described the card as 'deeply on-brand for ichthyology' while confirming she had 'put it in a drawer face-down.' The department chair, Dr. Osteichthyes Martin, defended the card. 'Cleared-and-stained specimens represent some of the most beautiful imagery in comparative anatomy,' he said. 'The articulated skeleton is a celebration of evolutionary design. The Santa hat is seasonal. I fail to see the issue.' Ventral has been asked to submit next year's card design for approval by the university communications office. She is currently considering 'a lovely otolith photograph,' which she describes as 'an inner ear bone — very festive when you see it under the right light.'