The sea is divided into what are known as “ pelagic zones ” which are fundamentally just layers divided up by how much sunlight the H2O receives , water force per unit area , and temperature . The airfoil layer is recognize as the epipelagic ( sunlit ) zone , as it receives the most spark and is warm . It then build downwardly , through the mesopelagic , bathypelagic , abyssopelagic , and the hadopelagic , which is the H2O more than 6,000 meters below the surface .
A late international collaboration of marine biologists led by Carlos Duarte from the University of Western Australia have discovered that around 95 % of all of the Pisces the Fishes biomass in the sea live in the mesopelagic zone ; about 10 - 30 clip in high spirits than previously believed . The consequence were publish as open accession in the journalNature Communications .
The mesopelagic is known as the evenfall zone , due to the diminished levels of light . The piddle in this area order from 200 - 1,000 meters below the surface , which can be check on sound reflection - locater , but does not have enough penetrating light to take photosynthesis . The fish that hold up here feed on stool or dead organisms that have float down from the epipelagic zone , herbivores that eat epipelagic plants at night but hide from razzing during the day , and carnivores that feed in on the scavengers and herbivores .
Calculating the amount of biomass in this region has been set about in the past , but it sour out that the Pisces are very adept at avoiding the nets used to capture and measure them . When Duarte and his team set cruise to circumnavigate the earth for seven month , they bank much more on sonar and echo sounding to view the fish , as opposed to physically call for them . They conclude that there are about 1 billion tons of fish living in this geographical zone ; which overshadow the amount of biomass in any other zona .
These result have some large entailment about how marine ecosystems are sham by sea curlicue ; the stream which affect the top 2,000 meter of the water . It was found that mesopelagic fish respire about 10 % of all master production in the water , which is more effective than previously believed .
Though many species of fish in the epipelagic are feeling the press from overfishing , pollution , and habitat destruction , that is n’t really the event for those in the mesopelagic . As the investigator let out , the fish are great at avoid nets . That means that these universe are essentially untouched by fisherman and aredescribed as “ pristine . ”However , since the datum was gathered acoustically and physical samples were n’t taken , it becomes hard to determine how these fish might be touch by pollution .
