Zoology. So far, NeopageTopsis Ionah lived away from the public square. Even the Anglo-Saxons, with their art consommated to find at any kind an attractive use name, had not made “Jonah ice fish” a star of zoology. Offense of dirty mouth, will say one. The fault to the depths of Antarctica, not the most accessible, will assert others. His colorless blood – because devoid of hemoglobin, but filled with antifreeze factors allowing him to withstand negative temperatures at the interface between water and marine ice – could have argued the trumpets of fame. Or this habit of mounting the guard on his nest. But about twenty other cousin species of the family of “crocodile fish” (Channichthyidae) had as much. Remained some anatomical peculiarities, expensive to systematic, and a curved spine on the muzzle. Not enough to do a popular song.
The article Posted Thursday, January 13 in the Current Biology journal could change the category. During an expedition conducted in the Weddell Sea – an ice-covered area, in a boundary limit, especially known for its emperor penguin colonies – a team from the Alfred Wegener Institute for the Polar and Marine Research, including the Headquarters is in Bremerhaven (Germany), discovered the greatest spawning ever updated. The photos have fixed 16,000 nests, the analysis of video images has listed more than 100,000 and Sonar recordings have spotted one million. And again: by extrapolating their sampling at the 240 square kilometers of the presumed spawning zone, scientists retain the astronomical figure of 60 million nests, laid at the bottom, at a depth of 435 to 520 meters.
The four discoverers did not expect such a celebration in February 2021. The expedition and its fifty crew members first had to study the carbon transport of the frozen surface at the bottom of the seas. Then list the different living, animal and vegetable communities. With stops and access to limited instruments. In the area in question, Autun Purser and three colleagues to photograph the seabed had six hours to immortalize them. “We have been stunned, confesses the marine biologist. So far, we had essentially described for this species isolated nests, and rare cases by gathering up to a few tens.”
a considerable biomass
Structures have a remarkable regularity: circulars, with a diameter of about 70 centimeters and a depth of 15 centimeters. To achieve them, the fish about 50 centimeters of length operates a circular swimming, sweeps light sediments, leaving the pebbles on site deposited by the melting of the pack ice. “The currents are weak in this area, so the structures remain stable,” says Autun Purser.
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