Deep-Sea Fishing in the European Mesolithic: Fact or Fantasy?

2004 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 273-290 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catriona Pickard ◽  
Clive Bonsall

Some previous authors have argued for the practice of offshore, deep-water fishing in the European Mesolithic. In this article, various lines of evidence are brought to bear on this question: the kinds of fishing gear employed, the evidence relating to the use of boats and navigation, site location, ethnographic data, and fish biology and behaviour. It is concluded that the existence of deep-sea fisheries cannot be demonstrated on the basis of the available data. However, around much of Europe Mesolithic shorelines now lie below sea level and the study highlights the need for underwater archaeological investigation of submerged landscapes.

Author(s):  
G. Diez ◽  
L. Arregi ◽  
M. Basterretxea ◽  
E. Cuende ◽  
I. Oyarzabal

Abstract The changes in abundance and biodiversity of deep-sea fish fauna are described based on an annual deep-water longline survey with data collected during the period 2015–2019 in the Basque Country continental Slope (ICES Division 8c). The sampling scheme included hauls in four 400 m strata, from 650–2250 m deep. The DST sensors installed in the main line have allowed us to set an accurate soak time for each haul, and they were used to calculate fishing effort and CPUE by haul. The catchability of the fishing gear indicated that 15% of the total hooks deployed in the five-year period were able to fish, and that the bottom longline was very effective in fishing a wide number of different species in all depth ranges. The fishing gear caught 14 different species of sharks (13 deepwater and one pelagic), two chimaeras and nine teleosts. The abundance and biomass registered on the hooks attached to the bottom were between three and four times higher than in the floating sections, and the highest CPUE and biomass were recorded between 1051–1450 m, from 2015 to 2017, and in the 1451–1850 m strata, but they do not show any clear trend throughout the five years of the series.


Author(s):  
P. A. Tyler ◽  
J. D. Gage

INTRODUCTIONOphiacantha bidentata (Retzius) is a widespread arctic-boreal ophiuroid with a circumpolar distribution in the shallow waters of the Arctic seas and penetrating into the deep sea of the.North Atlantic and North Pacific (Mortensen, 1927, 1933a; D'yakonov, 1954). Early observations of this species were confined to defining zoogeo-graphical and taxonomic criteria including the separation of deep water specimens as the variety fraterna (Farran, 1912; Grieg, 1921; Mortensen, 1933a). Mortensen (1910) and Thorson (1936, pp. 18–26) noted the large eggs (o.8 mm diameter) in specimens from Greenland and Thorson (1936) proposed that this species had ‘big eggs rich in yolk, shed directly into the sea. Much reduced larval stage or direct development’. This evidence is supported by observations of O. bidentata from the White and Barents Seas (Semenova, Mileikovsky & Nesis, 1964; Kaufman, 1974)..


2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (8) ◽  
pp. 70-72
Author(s):  
Jianbo Hu ◽  
◽  
Yifeng Di ◽  
Qisheng Tang ◽  
Ren Wen ◽  
...  

In recent years, China has made certain achievements in shallow sea petroleum geological exploration and development, but the exploration of deep water areas is still in the initial stage, and the water depth in the South China Sea is generally 500 to 2000 meters, which is a deep water operation area. Although China has made some progress in the field of deep-water development of petroleum technology research, but compared with the international advanced countries in marine science and technology, there is a large gap, in the international competition is at a disadvantage, marine research technology and equipment is relatively backward, deep-sea resources exploration and development capacity is insufficient, high-end technology to foreign dependence. In order to better develop China's deep-sea oil and gas resources, it is necessary to strengthen the development of drilling and completion technology in the oil industry drilling engineering. This paper briefly describes the research overview, technical difficulties, design principles and main contents of the completion technology in deepwater drilling and completion engineering. It is expected to have some significance for the development of deepwater oil and gas fields in China.


2010 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-38
Author(s):  
Damir Bucković ◽  
Maja Martinuš ◽  
Duje Kukoč ◽  
Blanka Tešović ◽  
Ivan Gušić

High-frequency sea-level changes recorded in deep-water carbonates of the Upper Cretaceous Dol Formation (island of Brač, Croatia)The upper part of the Middle Coniacian/Santonian-Middle Campanian deep-water Dol Formation of the island of Brač is composed of countless fine-grained allodapic intercalations deposited in an intraplatform trough. Within the studied section 13 beds can be distinguished, each defined by its lower part built up of dark grey limestone with abundance of branched, horizontally to subhorizontally oriented burrows, and the upper part, in which the light grey to white limestone contains larger burrows, rarely branched, showing no preferential orientation. The lower, dark grey, intensively bioturbated levels are interpreted as intervals formed during high-frequency sea-level highstands, while the upper, light grey-to-white levels are interpreted as intervals formed during the high-frequency sea-level lowstands. Cyclic alternation of these two intervals within the fine-grained allodapic beds is interpreted as the interaction between the amount of carbonate production on the platform margin and the periodicity and intensity of shedding and deposition in the distal part of toe-of-slope environment, which is governed by Milankovitch-band high frequency sea-level changes.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ralf ◽  
G. David Johnson ◽  
Kevin Conway

Mouthbrooding or oral incubation, the retention of early developmental stages inside of the mouth for an extended period of time, has evolved multiple times in bony fishes1,2. Though uncommon, this form of parental care has been documented and well-studied in several groups of freshwater fishes but is also known to occur in a small number of marine fishes, all inhabiting coastal waters1,2. A recent paper3, reported for the first time mouthbrooding in a deep-water fish species, the zeiform Parazen pacificus, which according to the authors “fills in a gap in the larval literature for this family of fishes and prompts further investigation into other novel reproductive modes of deep-sea fauna.”


Check List ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-7
Author(s):  
Wilbert Andrés Pérez-Pech ◽  
Jesper Guldberg Hansen ◽  
Erica DeMilio ◽  
Alberto de Jesús-Navarrete ◽  
Ivonne Martínez Mendoza ◽  
...  

Deep-water sampling in the Perdido Fold Belt, Gulf of Mexico, Mexican Economic Exclusive Zone yielded five specimens of tardigrades belonging to the genus Coronarctus Renaud-Mornant, 1974. The specimens represent the first records of the genus for Mexico. Two two-clawed larvae and two four-clawed larvae of Coronarctus mexicus Romano, Gallo, D’Addabbo, Accogli, Baguley & Montagna, 2011 and a single four-clawed larval specimen of an undescribed Coronarctus species were identified. Taxonomic analysis of the specimens contributed to the knowledge of deep-sea and Mexican marine tardigrades, two data-poor areas of study.


2006 ◽  
Vol 2 (5) ◽  
pp. 711-743 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. C. Skinner

Abstract. Given the magnitude and dynamism of the deep marine carbon reservoir, it is almost certain that past glacial – interglacial fluctuations in atmospheric CO2 have relied at least in part on changes in the carbon storage capacity of the deep sea. To date, physical ocean circulation mechanisms that have been proposed as viable explanations for glacial – interglacial CO2 change have focussed almost exclusively on dynamical or kinetic processes. Here, a simple mechanism is proposed for increasing the carbon storage capacity of the deep sea that operates via changes in the volume of southern-sourced deep-water filling the ocean basins, as dictated by the hypsometry of the ocean floor. It is proposed that a water-mass that occupies more than the bottom 3 km of the ocean will essentially determine the carbon content of the marine reservoir. Hence by filling this interval with southern-sourced deep-water (enriched in dissolved CO2 due to its particular mode of formation) the amount of carbon sequestered in the deep sea may be greatly increased. A simple box-model is used to test this hypothesis, and to investigate its implications. It is suggested that up to 70% of the observed glacial – interglacial CO2 change might be explained by the replacement of northern-sourced deep-water below 2.5 km water depth by its southern counterpart. Most importantly, it is found that an increase in the volume of southern-sourced deep-water allows glacial CO2 levels to be simulated easily with only modest changes in Southern Ocean biological export or overturning. If incorporated into the list of contributing factors to marine carbon sequestration, this mechanism may help to significantly reduce the "deficit" of explained glacial – interglacial CO2 change.


Clay Minerals ◽  
1993 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-84 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Thiry ◽  
T. Jacquin

AbstractThe distribution of clay minerals from the N and S Atlantic Cretaceous deep-sea sediments is related to rifting, sea-floor spreading, sea-level variations and paleoceanography. Four main clay mineral suites were identified: two are inherited and indicative of ocean geodynamics, whereas the others result from transformation and authigenesis and are diagnostic of Cretaceous oceanic depositional environments. Illite and chlorite, together with interstratified illite-smectite and smectite occur above the sea-floor basalts and illustrate the contribution of volcanoclastic materials of basaltic origin to the sediments. Kaolinite, with variable amounts of illite, chlorite, smectite and interstratified minerals, indicates detrital inputs from continents near the platform margins. Kaolinite decreases upward in the series due to open marine environments and basin deepening. It may increase in volume during specific time intervals corresponding to periods of falling sea-level during which overall facies regression and erosion of the surrounding platforms occurred. Smectite is the most abundant clay mineral in the Cretaceous deep-sea sediments. Smectite-rich deposits correlate with periods of relatively low sedimentation rates. As paleoweathering profiles and basal deposits at the bottom of Cretaceous transgressive formations are mostly kaolinitic, smectite cannot have been inherited from the continents. Smectite is therefore believed to have formed in the ocean by transformation and recrystallization of detrital materials during early diagenesis. Because of the slow rate of silicate reactions, transformation of clay minerals requires a long residence time of the particles at the water/sediment interface; this explains the relationships between the observed increases in smectite with long-term sea-level rises that tend to starve the basinal settings of sedimentation. Palygorskite, along with dolomite, is relatively common in the N and S Atlantic Cretaceous sediments. It is not detrital because correlative shelf deposits are devoid of palygorskite. Palygorskite is diagnostic of Mg-rich environments and is indicative of the warm and hypersaline bottom waters of the Cretaceous Atlantic ocean.


The geographical field in which most of the Discovery Committee’s work has been carried out during the past 25 years is the Southern Ocean. This zone of continuous deep water, very rich in marine fife, supports one major industry—the whaling industry—but is otherwise little developed as yet, and seldom visited. It is not easy to find a short descriptive label for the work itself, but nearly all of it comes under the headings of deep-sea oceanography, whales and whaling, or Antarctic geography, and much of it is concerned with the interrelations of these subjects. Since the beginning in 1924 the Discovery Committee has worked under the Colonial Office, but in 1949 the Committee’s functions, together with the scientific staff, the ships, and other assets, were taken over by the Admiralty, and now form part of the new National Institute of Oceanography. The Discovery Committee, in its original form, has been dissolved, but it is encouraging to know that the continuation of its work is assured.


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