“Biggest Blitz Ever” Recorded in Norway

From a latest research utilizing a wide-scale acoustic mapping method, oceanographers from Norway and MIT recorded “the most important predation occasion ever noticed within the ocean” (their phrases) a.ok.a. “the largest blitz of all time” (my phrases).

This occurred throughout the ocean from such storied “predation occasions” because the 2017 Eclipse Week Blitz within the Canal or the 1981 Columbus Day Blitz on Martha’s Winery, within the Arctic. There, a college of capelin, a small baitfish within the smelt household, gathered in a college of tens of hundreds of thousands of fish to spawn. That large biomass of bait attracted an enormous college of cod (about 2.5 million of them!), and over the course of some hours, the codfish ate about 50% of the capelin (about 10.5 million!).

That is the most important predation occasion recorded each within the numbers of people and the dimensions of the realm over which it befell.

Earlier than seeing this information, I didn’t even realize it was attainable to quantify the dimensions of a blitz, however the know-how used, the Ocean Acoustic Waveguide Distant Sensing system is “a sonic imaging method that employs a vertical acoustic array, hooked up to the underside of a ship, to ship sound waves down into the ocean and out in all instructions. These waves can journey over giant distances as they bounce off any obstacles or fish of their path. The identical or a second boat, towing an array of acoustic receivers, constantly picks up the scattered and mirrored waves, from so far as many tens of kilometers away. Scientists can then analyze the collected waveforms to create instantaneous maps of the ocean over an enormous areal extent.”

I’m certain Humminbird and Garmin are engaged on a model of this sonar in your bass boat as we communicate.

Whereas we’ve been handled to some spectacular striped bass blitzes over time, it’s exhausting to think about any of them consisting of two.5 million stripers (not even the 1997 Nationwide Instructor’s Appreciation Day Blitz). For those who’d wish to learn extra about this predation occasion, take a look at the MIT Information Article right here, and if you happen to’re concerned about a deeper dive into the science behind this know-how, and why this research is happening, take a look at the Nature Communications Biology article right here.