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Essential Fish Habitat (EFH) was defined by the U.S. Congress in the 1996 amendments to the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, or Magnuson-Stevens Act, as "those waters and substrate necessary to fish for spawning, breeding, feeding or growth to maturity." [1] Implementing regulations clarified that waters include all ...
An aquatic ecosystem is an ecosystem found in and around a body of water, in contrast to land-based terrestrial ecosystems. Aquatic ecosystems contain communities of organisms — aquatic life —that are dependent on each other and on their environment. The two main types of aquatic ecosystems are marine ecosystems and freshwater ecosystems. [1]
A fishery is an area with an associated fish or aquatic population which is harvested for its commercial or recreational value. Fisheries can be wild or farmed. Population dynamics describes the ways in which a given population grows and shrinks over time, as controlled by birth, death, and migration. It is the basis for understanding changing ...
Coral reef fish are fish which live amongst or in close relation to coral reefs. Coral reefs form complex ecosystems with tremendous biodiversity. Among the myriad inhabitants, the fish stand out as colourful and interesting to watch. Hundreds of species can exist in a small area of a healthy reef, many of them hidden or well camouflaged.
Similarly, an organism living in a demersal habitat is said to be a demersal organism, as in demersal fish. Pelagic habitats are intrinsically ephemeral, depending on what ocean currents are doing. The land-based ecosystem depends on topsoil and fresh water, while the marine ecosystem depends on dissolved nutrients washed down from the land. [15]
According to FishBase about 34,800 species of fish had been described as of February 2022, [5] which is more than the combined total of all other vertebrate species: mammals, amphibians, reptiles and birds. Fish species diversity is roughly divided equally between marine (oceanic) and freshwater ecosystems.
Fishes are a paraphyletic group and for this reason, the class Pisces seen in older reference works is no longer used in formal taxonomy.Traditional classification divides fish into three extant classes (Agnatha, Chondrichthyes, and Osteichthyes), and with extinct forms sometimes classified within those groups, sometimes as their own classes: [1]
Cnidaria (/ nɪˈdɛəriə, naɪ -/ nih-DAIR-ee-ə, NY-) [ 4 ] is a phylum under kingdom Animalia containing over 11,000 species [ 5 ] of aquatic animals found both in fresh water and marine environments (predominantly the latter), including jellyfish, hydroids, sea anemones, corals and some of the smallest marine parasites.