60 MILLION ICEFISH NESTS FOUND IN ANTARCTICA

Massive fish breeding colony discovered in the chilly Weddell Sea.

Two thousand kilometres south of the southernmost tip of Latin America lies the Weddell Sea. These cold, iceberg-filled waters are home to krill, emperor penguins – and a massive breeding colony of icefish.

Cameras towed behind a German research vessel have spotted 60 million active fish nests across 240 square kilometres. This is the largest fish breeding colony yet discovered, and appears to be a globally unique ecosystem.

“A few dozen nests have been observed elsewhere in the Antarctic, but this find is orders of magnitude larger,” says deepsea biologist Autun Purser, lead author of a paper in Current Biology. Known as Jonah’s icefish

(Neopagetopsis ionah), these fish are found exclusively in the Southern Ocean and live between 20 and 900 metres below the surface, preying on other fish and krill. They also likely provide input for local food webs, and may be the prey of Weddell seals.