March 25, 2016 — Life in the twilight zone constitutes a huge potential source of fishmeal and Omega 3 fatty acids needed to feed the world population. However, it exists in a kind of “no man’s water”, where there are no rules for fishing. Critical for assessing the resilience of the community and thus develop sustainable management strategies is a lack of understanding of the biological processes in the twilight zone making it impossible to accurately estimate the fishing pressure the stocks can sustain.
There are huge untapped resources of protein in the deep sea, but any potential exploitation should be done with caution, states the research community.
An international research group last year estimated that the so-called twilight zone (200 to 1,000 meters), maintains a community of fish, squid and crustaceans whose biomass far surpasses all the world’s current fisheries.
Furthermore, it is currently estimated that there are more than 1 million undescribed species in the twilight zone. According to the study, the twilight zone contains up to 90 percent of the world’s total fish biomass. There are so many creatures here that if estimates hold, it would be equivalent to 1.3 tons of fish biomass per person on earth, and that excludes squid and krill.