Scientists witness stunning, unprecedented carnage in the ocean
On an unassuming morning off the Norwegian coast, millions of small fish called capelin began to gather in the ocean. Soon enough, they amassed to 23 million individuals, forming a group over 6 miles long. Nearby predators, Atlantic cod, took notice. Over just a few hours, marine researchers, using a sonar imaging system, observed a colossal congregation of cod consume over 10 million capelin. It was the largest predation event ever documented in the ocean. "It’s the first time seeing predator-prey interaction on a huge scale, and it’s a coherent battle of survival," Nicholas Makris, a professor of mechanical and ocean engineering at MIT and one of the study's authors, said in an MIT statement. SEE ALSO: A dominant shark lurks in the deep, dark ocean. Meet the sixgill. This research from the Barents Sea was published in the peer-reviewed science journal Nature Communications Biology. The observations are from February 2014, but new techniques have illuminated the predation event by allowing scientists to clearly differentiate the cod from the capelin. To our species, the event appears extraordinary or violent. But nature is commonly ruthless. In the dark deep sea, home to sprawling groups of animals, such natural happenings certainly impact a certain population, but don't necessarily spell doom for the greater species, like the capelin. The 2014 fish gathering, called a shoal, makes up just 0.1 percent of capelin in this ocean region. "In our work we are seeing that natural catastrophic predation events can change the local predator prey balance in a matter of hours," Makris explained. "That’s not an issue for a healthy population with many spatially distributed population centers or ecological hotspots." Yet, crucially, as marine ecosystems are threatened and the oceans warm relentlessly, not all populations will always be able to absorb such momentous losses. "It’s been shown time and again that, when a population is on the verge of collapse, you will have that on
Scientists witness stunning, unprecedented carnage in the ocean