Ninety-five per cent of world's fish hide in mesopelagic zone

[n2doc]

An international team of marine biologists has found mesopelagic fish in the earth's oceans constitute 10 to 30 times more biomass than previously thought.

UWA Professor Carlos Duarte says mesopelagic fish – fish that live between 100 and 1000m below the surface – must therefore constitute 95 per cent of the world's fish biomass.

"Because the stock is much larger it means this layer must play a more significant role in the functioning of the ocean and affecting the flow of carbon and oxygen in the ocean," he says.

Prof Duarte led a seven-month circumnavigation of the globe in the Spanish research vessel Hesperides, with a team of scientists collecting echo-soundings of mesopelagic fish.

more

http://phys.org/news/2014-03-ninety-five-cent-world-fish-mesopelagic.html

[pscot]

1. i guess this means

we have get those nets deeper.

[Scootaloo]

2. They likely make up that much mass BECAUSE of those nets...

Having depleted the pelagic zone so much

[packman]

3. As we read this

Japanese fishing boats are readjusting their nets for that zone.

[Feral Child]

5. Depth charges

could make commercial fishery viable...

[progressoid]

8. And we likely will.

People don't like to go hungry. And rather than curb population growth, well just dig deeper.

[dipsydoodle]

4. Maybe interesting to rod fish for

using a float and non stretch terylene line.

[kristopher]

6. Great article.

Thanks.

[MyUncle]

7. IF you read the whole article, it's AWESOME news!

Basically they say fish in this zone avoid nets. They say the Pacific gyre (and others) as opposed to being a wasteland of garbage is actually a healthy fish ecosystem. When I was living on Oahu, it was common knowledge among the fishermen that the gyre had a lot of fish. The reason is when there is debris, let's say a natural log in the ocean, small fish shelter under it and reproduce which attacks larger fish, which attracts even larger fish. Ocean fishers look for debris, because that is where the fish are.

As repugnant as it sounds, the gyre a floating garbage dump, would be a highly logical place for a lot of fish to live in and propagate.

It would be almost impossible to clean up the gyre. We must mitigate man made debris there, but even if we did remove every trace of man made crap, the gyre would still be a collection of wood, coconuts and every other natural floating thing.

It's the currents stupid!

[obxhead]

9. Yes, but wood coconuts and other natural things break down.

The plastic that floats there now will continue to float there.

It's not impossible to clean up the gyre, it's just not profitable enough for anyone to do it.

[shireen]

10. unfortunately, most of that plastic

occurs as very small bits. It is consumed by small fish. Those small fish that are not killed accumulate the plastic in their bodies, and pass it up the food chain.