Nail Care

I have never cared about (or for) my finger nails.

(With an opening sentence like this, I probably just lost the interest of all of my three readers. I would promise that this entry is going to rapidly improve, but it's about fingernails for God's sake.)

So, anyway... Yesterday, for the first time in my life, I went and had a manicure. You may think that my sudden fascination with nail care is related to my impending wedding, but if you did, you'd be wrong. It actually has to do with my thesis. Seriously. An integral part of my thesis - the cornerstone upon which everything else rests - is determing the age of my fish. Considering that all efforts to swim up to a fish and ask it its age have so far failed, you might wonder how one determines the age of a fish.

Fish have a small bone called an otolith that essentially floats in part of their brain case. Being, like us, mainly water, fish face a problem when it comes to orienting themselves in their rather weightless watery domain. Because otoliths are bone and therefore denser than body tissue, they react differently to movement than the rest of a fish's body. When the otolith moves, it triggers recptors that let the brain know that the fish has, for example, just executed a sharp right turn with a quarter twist. It's analogous to the fluid in our inner ear canals pressing against the hair cells.

At this point in my ramble, you are probably wondering what on earth an otolith has to do with the age of a fish. And wasn't this post supposed to be about nail care??? Patience, gentle reader, and all will be revealed.

Otoliths increase in size as the fish grows. Fortunately for science, the bone growth is opaque in summer and clear in winter. These alternating bands form rings akin to those found on trees: count the rings, you know the age of the fish. A large otolith, however, is about the size of a pinkie finger nail (aha! you erroneously think, finally we're getting to the nail connection), meaning that rings need to be counted under a microscope. Some of the older fish have such thick otoliths that the rings can't be clearly seen. In this case, the small bone needs to be broken half and lightly charred, a procedure appropriately named "break and burn".

How, you might ask, does one break an otolith in half? Well, one carefully grasps the otolith between thumbs and forefingers, placing the thumb nails in the center of the bone. With a quick snap, one (hopefully) breaks the bone straight down the middle. The problem I have is that my thumb nails don't extend beyond the flesh of my thumb pads, thereby making it impossible to place them along the center of the otolith. Every time my nails begin to approach the appropriate length, they crack and chip and need to get trimmed.

When this happened again yesterday, I realized that if I ever want to finish my thesis I'm going to need to take care of my nails. Having no idea how to do that, I sought the help of a professional: I got a manicure and some extra special (and quite expensive) nail strengthener stuff.

I find it amusing that it is science, a profession populated with tomboys and grrrls, that has forced me to pay such close attention to my fingernails.