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A fish's hypoxia tolerance can be represented in different ways. A commonly used representation is the critical O 2 tension (P crit), which is the lowest water O 2 tension (P O 2) at which a fish can maintain a stable O 2 consumption rate (M O 2). [2]
In some fish, capillary blood flows in the opposite direction to the water, causing countercurrent exchange. The muscles on the sides of the pharynx push the oxygen-depleted water out the gill openings. In bony fish, the pumping of oxygen-poor water is aided by a bone that surrounds the gills called the operculum. [6]
An aquatic system lacking dissolved oxygen (0% saturation) is termed anaerobic, reducing, or anoxic. In water, oxygen levels are approximately 7 ppm or 0.0007% in good quality water, but fluctuate. [5] Many organisms require hypoxic conditions. Oxygen is poisonous to anaerobic bacteria for example. [3]
Dissolved oxygen levels required by various species in the Chesapeake Bay (US). In aquatic environments, oxygen saturation is a ratio of the concentration of "dissolved oxygen" (DO, O 2), to the maximum amount of oxygen that will dissolve in that water body, at the temperature and pressure which constitute stable equilibrium conditions.
Breathing air is primarily of use to fish that inhabit shallow, seasonally variable waters where the water's oxygen concentration may seasonally decline. Fish dependent solely on dissolved oxygen, such as perch and cichlids, quickly suffocate, while air-breathers survive for much longer, in some cases in water that is little more than wet mud.
Climate change is going to wreak havoc on the world’s oceans, according to two new studies, depleting the warming waters of the oxygen that fish and other sea life need to survive.
Hypoxia occurs when dissolved oxygen (DO) concentration falls to or below 2 ml of O 2 /liter. [2] When a body of water experiences hypoxic conditions, aquatic flora and fauna begin to change behavior in order to reach sections of water with higher oxygen levels. Once DO declines below 0.5 ml O 2 /liter in a body of water, mass mortality occurs.
Abiotic changes in dissolved gases include exchanges of dissolved gases between the atmosphere and lake surface, vertical or horizontal entrainment of water with differing concentrations (e.g. low-oxygen water below a lake's thermocline), or import and export of dissolved gases from inflowing streams or a lake outlet.