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Marine Biology Commons

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Marine & Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles

Marine biology

2016

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Full-Text Articles in Marine Biology

High Resolution Study Of The Spatial Distributions Of Abyssal Fishes By Autonomous Underwater Vehicle, Rosanna Milligan, K. J. Morris, B. J. Bett, J. M. Durden, D. O. B. Jones, K. Robert, H. A. Ruhl, D. M. Bailey May 2016

High Resolution Study Of The Spatial Distributions Of Abyssal Fishes By Autonomous Underwater Vehicle, Rosanna Milligan, K. J. Morris, B. J. Bett, J. M. Durden, D. O. B. Jones, K. Robert, H. A. Ruhl, D. M. Bailey

Marine & Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles

On abyssal plains, demersal fish are believed to play an important role in transferring energy across the seafloor and between the pelagic and benthic realms. However, little is known about their spatial distributions, making it difficult to quantify their ecological significance. To address this, we employed an autonomous underwater vehicle to conduct an exceptionally large photographic survey of fish distributions on the Porcupine Abyssal Plain (NE Atlantic, 4850 m water depth) encompassing two spatial scales (1–10 km2) on and adjacent to a small abyssal hill (240 m elevation). The spatial distributions of the total fish fauna and that …