Mesopelagic fishes occur in all the world's oceans, but their abundance and consequently their ecological significance remains uncertain. The current global estimate based on net sampling prior to 1980 suggests a global abundance of one gigatonne (10 9 t) wet weight. Here we report novel evidence of efficient avoidance of such sampling by the most common myctophid fish in the Northern Atlantic, i.e. Benthosema glaciale. We reason that similar avoidance of nets may explain consistently higher acoustic abundance estimates of mesopelagic fish from different parts of the world's oceans. It appears that meso pelagic fish abundance may be underestimated by one order of magnitude, suggesting that the role of mesopelagic fish in the oceans might need to be revised. KEY WORDS: Mesopelagic fish · Avoidance behavior · Trawling · Acoustics Resale or republication not permitted without written consent of the publisherMesopelagic fishes show efficient avoidance behavior in response to sampling gears.

We deployed an upward-facing echo sounder mounted on the bottom and cabled to shore in a ~400 m fjord location for long-term studies of small mesopelagic fish and their potential predators. The population of the myctophid Benthosema glaciale displayed diverse diel vertical migration (DVM) behaviors, including normal DVM to surface waters at night, reverse DVM in the lower part of the water column in which fish ascended to ~200 m at day, as well as nonmigration of some individuals. The relative prevalence of these behavioral modes varied with season. Acoustic target tracking of individuals in deep water showed that B. glaciale was conspicuously inactive and drifted back and forth with weak tidal currents, essentially acting as plankton. Swimming was largely restricted to infrequent short bouts. More active swimming occasionally occurred in the vertical direction, and then in a stepwise pattern. Potential predators in deep water were swimming at speeds of < 0.5 body length s

The light regime of the water column has a strong structuring effect on aquatic food webs and it has been previously hypothesized that coastal water darkening has increased the success of tactile predators relative to visual predators such as fish. Due to a general lack of time-series of optical parameters, we applied a proxy for light attenuation that depends on salinity and dissolved oxygen at a time of the year when chlorophyll concentrations were low. We present evidence that coastal waters of Norway have darkened as a result of freshening over the period 1935 to 2007. Our results suggest that locations where coastal water penetrates into deep basins have been prone to water column darkening, particularly if dissolved oxygen has also declined. We have estimated that salinity and oxygen variation on the ranges 33 to 35 PSU and 1 to 6 ml O 2 l -1 are associated with up to 8 orders of magnitude difference in photon flux at 200 m depth in a water column devoid of pigments. Our results suggest such darkening needs to be considered in analyses of mesopelagic regime shifts involving mass occurrence of the jellyfish Periphylla periphylla.

Impacts of climate change on ocean productivity sustaining world fisheries are predominantly negative but vary greatly among regions. We assessed how 39 fisheries resources-ranging from data-poor to data-rich stocks-in the North East Atlantic are most likely affected under the intermediate climate emission scenario RCP4.5 towards 2050. This region is one of the most productive waters in the world but subjected to pronounced climate change, especially in the northernmost part. In this climate impact assessment, we applied a hybrid solution combining expert opinions (scorings)-supported by an extensive literature review-with mechanistic approaches, considering stocks in three different large marine ecosystems, the North, Norwegian and Barents Seas. This approach enabled calculation of the directional effect as a function of climate exposure and sensitivity attributes (life-history schedules), focusing on local stocks (conspecifics) across latitudes rather than the species in general. The resulting synopsis (50-82°N) contributes substantially to global assessments of major fisheries (FAO, The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture, 2020), complementing related studies off northeast United States (35-45°N) (Hare et al.,

Hypoxia [O2 < 2.0 mL L−1 (87 μmol kg−1)] and severely hypoxic water masses [O2 < 0.5 mL L−1 (21.8 μmol kg−1)] are increasing in coastal marine ecosystems due to eutrophication and warming. Here, we investigate the response of the suboxic-tolerant endemic fish, Sufflogobius bibarbatus, to variations in the thermal and oxygen environment, as well as to predation pressure, using 22 yr worth of satellite and in situ data. We show that environmental variation and predation pressure affect the goby population, which has expanded over the last decade while that of horse mackerel has contracted. These changes co-occurred with a general warming in the north and central shelf areas (north of 24.5°S). Spring warming positively affected both goby and hake abundances, but not the horse mackerel, suggesting different responses to surface temperature. The goby habitat contracted when predators were abundant, particularly in the north, which is the fringe of its distributional area. The implications of the differential tolerance of gobies and their predators for climate variations are discussed.