Scientists onboard an icebreaker in Antarctica were blown away when they spied a trove of 60 million icefish nests dotting the floor of the Weddell Sea. The bonanza of nurseries – each guarded by a ghostly looking parent – represents the large
were blown away when they spied a trove of 60 million icefish nests dotting the floor of the Weddell Sea. The bonanza of nurseries – each guarded by a ghostly looking parent – represents the largest known breeding colony of fish.Autun Purser of the Alfred Wegener Institute was on the bridge of the German icebreaker, called the RV Polarstern, keeping watch for whales when his graduate student, Lilian Böhringer, who was monitoring the camera feed called up to the bridge.
On the video feed, Böhringer could see fish nests pockmarking the seafloor about every 10 inches in all directions and covering an area of 93 square miles . The nests were modest bowls carved in the mud on the seafloor by notothenioid icefish , which are native to the chilly southern oceans. They are the only known vertebrates to completely lack hemoglobin in their blood. Because of this, icefish are considered"white-blooded.""We realized after ringing up the home institute the next day that we had found something spectacular," Purser said.
Icefish tend to nest in groups, but"the most ever seen before was forty nests or something like that," said Purser. This nesting site, after extensive surveying, has an estimated 60 million nests. "We've never seen anything like this," Purser added.The researchers were in the general area because they were studying an upwelling of water that was 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the surrounding water.