October 13, 2015 — Polar cod are a vital food source for whales, narwhals, ringed seals and arctic seabirds, but researchers have had a hard time studying these fish and estimating their numbers.
That’s now changing, thanks to new netting technology. Recently, a team of German researchers were able to catch a large number of polar cod living beneath the arctic sea ice. Their findings suggest billions of juvenile cod prefer the shelter of the arctic shelves and drifting sea ice.
The researchers published their findings this week in the journal Polar Biology.
“For the first time, we’ve been able to use a special net directly below the sea ice to catch a large number of polar cod, and therefore to estimate their prevalence over a large area,” Carmen David, a biologist with the Alfred Wegener Institute and first author of the new study, said in a press release.