15
September 2017
By Michael
Tennesen
There are
not just fewer fish in the sea: there are disproportionately fewer old fish. A
study of fisheries in the seas around the US and Europe has found that their
populations of ageing fish have been reduced by an average of 72 per cent.
The
researchers looked at 63 fisheries, which had records spanning 24-140 years. To
determine the age of fish, they used several techniques including examining
otoliths: “stones” in the fish’s ears that grow annual rings rather like a
tree.
“The new
statistics revealed that the reduction of older fish populations had actually
increased by 180 per cent,” says lead author Lewis Barnett of
the University of Washington in Seattle.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment
You only need to enter your comment once! Comments will appear once they have been moderated. This is so as to stop the would-be comedian who has been spamming the comments here with inane and often offensive remarks. You know who you are!