by Underwatertimes.com News Service – December 14, 2011 19:51 EST
MIAMI, Florida — The science behind counting fish in the ocean to measure their abundance has never been simple. A new scientific paper in Nature Climate Change shows that expanding ‘ocean dead zones’ (areas of low oxygen) driven in part by climate change makes that science even more complex.
Blue marlin, other billfish and tropical tuna are high energy fish that need large amounts of dissolved oxygen. Scientists from the disciplines of oceanography and fisheries biology are sounding an alarm that the expansion of dead zones is shrinking the useable habitat for these highly valuable pelagic fish in the tropical northeast Atlantic Ocean. And as dead zones shrink habitat by depriving fish of areas with enough dissolved oxygen for them to thrive, they squeeze these species into surface waters where they are more vulnerable to fishing.
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