Polar and cold seas
The Arctic and Southern Oceans and cold northern seas. 1 fish on EveryFish so far.
The Arctic and Southern Oceans and the cold northern seas hold fish that live in water near or below zero. Sea water freezes at about minus 1.9 degrees Celsius, and polar fish carry antifreeze proteins in their blood to stop ice crystals forming in their bodies. Around Antarctica one group, the notothenioids, makes up most of the fish, while the Arctic holds cods, char, capelin and the long-lived Greenland shark.
Life in freezing water
Antarctic icefish have no red blood cells and nearly clear blood, carrying oxygen dissolved in their plasma, which works because cold water holds a lot of oxygen. Toothfish grow to around 2 metres and are the top fish predators of the Southern Ocean. In the Arctic, polar cod live under the sea ice and feed seals, whales and seabirds. The Greenland shark grows very slowly and may live for around 400 years.
Fishing and protection
Patagonian and Antarctic toothfish, sold as Chilean sea bass, were heavily poached in the 1990s. Fishing in Antarctic waters is managed by CCAMLR, an international commission, which in 2016 agreed to create a large marine protected area in the Ross Sea. In the Arctic, warming and shrinking sea ice are letting cod, mackerel and other fish move north, and countries agreed in 2018 to hold off commercial fishing in the central Arctic Ocean while it is studied.
Famous polar and cold seas fish
Still to be written: Antarctic toothfish, Patagonian toothfish, Mackerel icefish, Antarctic silverfish, Boreogadus, Arctic char, Capelin.
Further reading
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Photo credits on this page
The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.
- Greenland shark: Gervais et Boulart, Public domain, source