Source: New York Times
Author: JoAnna Klein
Between the ocean’s bright blue surface and its blackest depths — 660 to 3,300 feet below — is a mysterious, dark span of water. Welcome to the twilight zone.
Recent evidence suggests there are more animals here by weight than in all of the world’s fisheries combined. But who lives here, and in what quantities?
Source: Forbes
Author: Melissa Cristina Márquez
It’s a girl! It’s a boy! It’s a new shark species!
Continue reading Lighting The Way For A New Lanternshark Species
Source: Pew Charitable Trusts
Author: Andrew Clayton
The deep sea is a mysterious world, pitch black and subject to extreme conditions. Life there is specially adapted to this environment, but also remarkably susceptible to human activities such as fishing.
Deep-sea fish tend to be slow-growing, late-maturing and long-lived. Because of these factors, stocks can be quick to collapse and slow to recover. Their sensitive and vulnerable nature makes ending over-exploitation of vital importance.
Continue reading Two Steps to Prevent Overfishing of Deep Sea Species in the EU
Source: The Independent
Author: Josh Gabbatiss
An enormous shark ”nursery” swarming with the predatory fish and strewn with their eggs has been found in the waters 200 miles off the western Irish coast.
The rare discovery was made by a remotely operated vehicle exploring the region’s cold-water coral reefs at depths of around 750m.
Scientists observed a large school of blackmouth catsharks, a relatively small species found throughout the northeast Atlantic, alongside the more unusual and solitary sailfin roughshark.
Continue reading Rare ‘shark nursery’ discovered hidden in deep waters west of Ireland
Source: Mongabay
Author: Emily Clark
When Luiz Rocha, a fish biologist at the California Academy of Sciences, goes scuba diving, he tacks on one and a half times his body weight in specialized diving gear. Once he submerges, he can’t spare a moment to take in the vibrant corals just beneath the surface — he has greater depths to plumb.
Rocha is headed toward what Smithsonian Institution fish biologist Carole Baldwin calls “a very diverse and productive portion of the tropical ocean that science has largely missed”: mesophotic reefs. “Mesophotic” is Greek for “middle light,” referring to the intermediate amount of sunlight that can penetrate to depths of 30 to 150 meters (100 to 500 feet) below the ocean’s surface.
Continue reading Are deep sea reefs really a lifeboat for our vanishing corals?
Source: CBC News
Most people are familiar with the ever-popular capelin or cod, but get up close and personal with three fish with creepy names and faces only a mother (fish?) could love.
Jane Adey, host of The Broadcast, got a peek in a Department of Fisheries and Oceans lab in St. John’s.
The deep sea angler is also known (more nefariously) as the northern sea devil.
Their squat bodies actually come in handy for their living conditions — this one was found 1,400 metres below the surface, according to Karen Dwyer, a fishery biologist with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans in St. John’s.
Continue reading Here are 3 cool and creepy fish you likely haven’t seen before
