The world’s biggest fish hatchery

THIS IS A element of the premier fish-breeding floor however discovered. It occupies additional than 240km² of the floor of the Weddell Sea, off Antarctica. Each individual nest is guarded by a notothenioid icefish, commonly the father. Entirely, there are about 60m nests, housing much more than 100bn eggs. The website was discovered by Autun Purser of the Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research, in Bremerhaven, and is claimed in Present-day Biology. Dr Purser noticed the first nests on a dive. Even more dives uncovered much more. He and his colleagues then towed cameras more than the web page to uncover its whole extent. A single rationale animals live in crowds like this is to swamp predators. That can, even though, backfire when the predator is a present day fishing vessel. For many years, there has been converse of making the Weddell Sea a safeguarded location. Dr Purser has appear up with however an additional purpose to do so.

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This report appeared in the Science & technological innovation section of the print edition beneath the headline “The world’s most important fish hatchery”