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Deep sea visitors

Monday, April 24th 2006 - 21:00 UTC
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ONE of the most long-living fish in the world, an orange roughy (Hoplostethus atlanticus), which has never been recorded in the Southwest Atlantic before, has been caught on the eastern slope of the Falkland Islands at a depth of about 770 m.

The fish, a 37cm long mature male was caught by trawler Manuel Angel Nores during the experimental fishery for grenadier in March.

Fisheries scientist Vlad Laptikovskiy said individuals of this species can live as long as 149 years, attain length of 75 cm, and matures at between 20 and 30 years of age. "They occur on seamounts, ocean ridges and continental slopes of the North Atlantic, off West Africa, as well as in the Indian and Pacific oceans, mostly around Australia and New Zealand. Surprisingly, they have never been reported in the West Atlantic south of Canada."

It is a high-priced delicious commercial fish and coupled with a long life span, that makes it very vulnerable to fisheries ? a good example of this, Vlad said, is the Namibian experience. "Orange roughy stocks were discovered there in 1994, and despite all precautionary measures imposed on the fishery it depleted by the year 2000 (stock biomass decreased from 305,000 metric tonnes to 74,000 metric tonnes)."

During the same experimental fishery a few juvenile black oreos (Allocyttus niger- pictured above) were also discovered. Vlad commented, "This species is fished in the Indo-Pacific in association with orange roughy, and its presence in the Southwest Atlantic was only recently discovered (2004). So, earlier in this millennium a few representatives of the southern Indo-Pacific deep-sea commercial fish fauna decided to make the long trip around Cape Horn."

Will they settle well, producing a base for new fisheries in future? "Who knows?" says Vlad, added, "They may have been here for some time and simply not been encountered previously." (PN)

Categories: Falkland Islands.

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