Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Krill also release faecal pellets (3) whilst they feed, which can sink to the deep sea but can be consumed (coprophagy) and degraded as they descend (4) by krill, bacteria and zooplankton. In the marginal ice zone, faecal pellet flux can reach greater depths (5). Krill also release moults, which sink and contribute to the carbon flux (6).
In particular, the biomass of consumers (copepods, krill, shrimp, forage fish) is larger than the biomass of primary producers. This happens because the ocean's primary producers are tiny phytoplankton which grow and reproduce rapidly, so a small mass can have a fast rate of primary production .
Some of the largest plankton are krill and feed the largest of animals, baleen whales. My first foray into the scientific world was a job sexing Jassa falcata (a tiny amphipod) under a microscope.
Juvenile fish are marketed as food. Whitebait is a marketing term for the fry of fish, typically between 25 and 50 millimetres long. Such juvenile fish often travel together in schools along the coast, and move into estuaries and sometimes up rivers where they can be easily caught with fine meshed fishing nets.
This is an accepted version of this page This is the latest accepted revision, reviewed on 23 February 2025. Organisms living in water or air that are drifters on the current or wind This article is about the marine organisms. For other uses, see Plankton (disambiguation). Marine microplankton and mesoplankton Part of the contents of one dip of a hand net. The image contains diverse planktonic ...
Forage fish, also called prey fish or bait fish, are small pelagic fish that feed on planktons (i.e. planktivores) and other small aquatic organisms (e.g. krill). They are in turn preyed upon by various predators including larger fish, seabirds and marine mammals , this making them keystone species in their aquatic ecosystems .
A planktivore is an aquatic organism that feeds on planktonic food, including zooplankton and phytoplankton. [1] [2] Planktivorous organisms encompass a range of some of the planet's smallest to largest multicellular animals in both the present day and in the past billion years; basking sharks and copepods are just two examples of giant and microscopic organisms that feed upon plankton.
The capelin or caplin (Mallotus villosus) is a small forage fish of the smelt family found in the North Atlantic, North Pacific and Arctic oceans. [1] In summer, it grazes on dense swarms of plankton at the edge of the ice shelf. Larger capelin also eat a great deal of krill and other crustaceans.