For decades Antarctic fish have drawn scientists from around the world to study their strange polar adapta-tions. Few people would have seen any potential for eating or harvesting these bizarre fish. I had studied fish for years, but seen nothing like Antarctic drag-onfish (Family Bathydraconidae)....
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| Format: | Text |
| Language: | English |
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| Online Access: | http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.634.5258 http://www.pacificecologist.org/archive/20/pe20-remote-fishery.pdf |
| Summary: | For decades Antarctic fish have drawn scientists from around the world to study their strange polar adapta-tions. Few people would have seen any potential for eating or harvesting these bizarre fish. I had studied fish for years, but seen nothing like Antarctic drag-onfish (Family Bathydraconidae). Some have leopard print, thick leather-like skin and blunt triangle heads, culminating in a jagged underbite. Nor had I ever seen a fish as clean as Icefish (Family Channichthyidae), which lack hemoglobin, a peculiar polar adaptation that gives them clear white blood. In one trawl we found a small speckled purple fish with a long fleshy barbell snaking off its chin. We coined it “species A.” Our nets were also full of fish from the family Nototheniidae, the most diverse family of fishes in the Southern Ocean. While most of the notothenoids don’t look particularly strange, their physiological adaptations are extraordinary. These fish proliferate in the frigid Antarctic waters by producing anti-freeze proteins that keeps their blood from crystallizing. Most of the fish were small and slen-der, usually 10 to 30 centimeters, until we caught an Antarctic toothfish (Dis-sostichus mawsoni), a fish that grows to more than two meters in length, making them the largest and most dominant fish in the Southern Ocean. The toothfish, is heavy and dense out-side its water world. But once placed in a tub of water for a quick buoyancy test, it floated perfectly neutral in the water. Most fish use a swim bladder (filling it with air to stay aloft in the water column) but toothfish use lipids (or fats) to achieve perfect buoyancy with zero effort. But I wasn’t here to study any amazing Ant-arctic piscine adaptations. I was a graduate student studying the life history of toothfish (also known as “Chilean sea bass”), heeding a request made by the Southern Ocean management body, CCAMLR (the Convention The most remote fishery on earth Over-fishing worldwide has driven fishers to the unique Ross Sea in Antarctica in pursuit of toothfish, a ... |
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