New Zealand fishing boats. Photo by QFSE Media, Wikimedia Commons.
Pelagic-oceanic fish commonly caught in warmer waters, such as skipjack tuna and blue mackerel, have been increasing in New Zealand’s waters since the 1950s, while cold-water species such as southern bluefin tuna display strong reductions in overall catch from the 1970s onwards, new research has found.
In over 30 years of continuous operation and development, FishBase has become one of the largest and most extensively accessed online public resources in the history of scientific research. A new study reveals it is also one of the most highly cited databases.
Reference image of dead fish washed ashore during a golden algae toxic bloom. Photo by Michael Hooper, USGS.
Climate change-induced droughts and fish kills affect larger fish more severely than smaller individuals, according to new research.
In a paper published in Environmental Biology of Fishes, researchers from Leiden University, Sportvisserij Zuidwest Nederland and the Sea Around Us initiative at the University of British Columbia compared evidence from drought-induced fish kills in the Netherlands, fisheries management literature and multiple physiological studies. They confirmed that when water gets warmer and deoxygenated, larger and older individuals within a species tend to die in greater numbers than their smaller and younger counterparts.
Africa Museum in Tervuren. Photo by Jean Housen, Wikimedia Commons.
The Sea Around Us partner, FishBase, is the largest global information system on fishes. It provides encyclopaedical information on all described fishes and includes many tools for scientists in a large array of ichthyological disciplines. With about 700,000 visits per month, it is the most successful database on any group of living organisms.
SeaLifeBase complements the success of FishBase and has become an important platform for information on non-fish marine organisms.
Black and white snapper in the Red Sea, Egypt. Photo by Derek Keats, Wikimedia Commons
Warmer water than that to which a fish is used becomes an aggressor of sorts that impacts internal biochemical processes and forces the fish to stop growing at a smaller size than it would normally do in optimal habitat conditions, new research shows.