Deep-sea fish at the Antarctic – the evolution of polar fish

Deep-sea fish at the Antarctic – the evolution of polar fish

Assistant Professor Peter Rask Møller, Ph.D., Zoological Museum, University of Copenhagen

The purpose of this project is to catch as many species of fish as possible at depths ranging between 500 and 4000 metres in Antarctic and Sub-Antarctic waters (the Ross Sea, the Amundsen Sea and the Bellinghausen Sea). The fish are to be used for systematic and phylogenetic analyses of the evolution of polar fish, with focus on the most species-rich genera of snail fish (Liparidae) and eelpouts (Zoarcidae). The evolutionary history of these genera is largely unknown, and particularly the relation between the Arctic and Antarctic taxa pose an unanswered question. By combining material from Greenland and the Antarctic in morphological and molecular analyses of the relation between the genera, we shall be able to test, for instance, the theories that polar organisms are able to migrate from one polar region to the other by staying in the cold deep waters in tropical regions.    

The project represents a natural extension of the research of the Zoological Museum in the evolution of Arctic fish. The former projects on the evolution of cod (Gadidae), eelpouts and snail fish have solely been based on material from the northern hemisphere, as the researchers have not had access to tissue samples from the waters of the Antarctic.

The tools used for fishing will be a 15-metre shrimp trawl or, possibly, an Agassiz trawl in two selected transects of each of the three Antarctic seas, to the extent that the ice allows us to fish. We shall be fishing from the upper continental slope and down into the abyssal zone. The depth and the number of stations may be adjusted as we go along if, for instance, sea ice covers the shallowest waters. Each transect will consist of seven stations, with depths from 500 metres to 4000 metres, so that the fishing will encompass a total of 42 pulls of the trawl.