In a tiny island laboratory in the Northwesternmost corner of Washington, one marine biologist is on a mission: scan every known fish species in the world.

It’s a painstaking and smelly task, but one that promises to fundamentally change the way scientists and educators look at marine anatomy.

Adam Summers, a fish expert at the University of Washington, has been 3-D scanning fish for decades, but it was always a complicated and expensive undertaking. Getting access to the right equipment was a struggle and each specimen would take nearly a day to process. In late 2015 Friday Harbor Laboratories on San Juan Island acquired its own computed tomography scanner and Summers’ team set out to achieve what had once seemed impossible: to create 3-D models of all 33,000 known fish species.

CREDITS:
Produced and edited by
Jared Rusk

Photography by
Greg Davis
Jared Rusk

Additional photos / 3-D scans
Adam Summers

Music by Will Slater / Firstcom