There’s Plenty of Fish in the Sea!

I’ve always wondered how many fish are actually in the sea. “There’s plenty of fish in the sea” is an old saying that everyone has heard.  But how many are there really?

New species are found everyday in the ocean.  Here is a list of the many species already found: Blue Tang Surgeonfish, Sturgeon Poacher, Butterfly goodeid, Percula Clownfish, Four-Eyed Fish, Guadalupe Cardinalfish, Bala Shark, Topminnow, and many more. Because earth has more oceans then land it’s no surprise that there are so many types of fish. Many of the fish in the sea have adapted from other species. The fish adapt to live easier in their environment; for instance if a fish needs to live in a darker place it might have adapted to lose its eyesight because it’s not needed. This occurs often in the ocean, and it relates back to Darwin’s law of evolution.

In studies today 230,000 species  have been found. Recently a 10 year study was released and the topic of study was just how many fish are in the sea. About 360 scientists got together to survey different regions of the world. Even though new species are always being discover they have come to an estimate for 230000 species.

In the ocean, fish have to adapt to several problems including, regulating salt intake, obtaining oxygen, adapting to water pressure, dealing with wind, waves and changing temperatures, and getting enough light. In that you can see all the different ways why a fish might change and become new species. One fish in fact called the Deep Sea Dragon fish, or  Grammatostomias Flagellibarba (by scientist) lives in the darker part of the ocean and to attract fish it lights up a lure connected to his belly.

My favorite is the Sunburst Anthias. This fish can be found in the Western Pacific. Other names for it are the Fathead Anthias and Hawk Anthias. There is a reason this little fish is called the Sunburst Anthias. The colors of it are bright and loud. It is almost like  you are actually looking at the sunset. Some of those colors include bright orange and fierce fuchsia.

All in all it seems likea new species of fish will be revealed every year. Small fish, large fish, spiky fish, and even fish that light up. The amount of space in the ocean is almost endless and with all the room to grow new fish are moving to new places and adapting into new species.

 

Further Questions:

  1. What are other challenges fish face to survive?
  2. How many species do they predict are in the ocean that they don’t even know exist?
  3. What’s the rarest type of fish in the ocean?
  4. What’s the estimated total number of fish in the world?

Video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NmI3h-GPlI

6 thoughts on “There’s Plenty of Fish in the Sea!

  1. This post was very informative and gave some cool information about the oceans. It was very interesting to find out that there is 230,000 different species known that live in the ocean. That is cool that a fish called Grammatostomias Flagellibarba attracts fish when it lights up which is really sweet. there is 5,000 unknown fish and hundreds of thousands of other marine life forms that are yet to be discovered. It just blows me AWAY that there is that many fish in the ocean and there is still lots to be discovered today.

    http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/10/031024064333.htm

  2. This post was very informative, and gave lots of information about how many species there are in the sea and just why their are so many different ones. It was an interesting fact that their are over 230,000 species and those are just the ones we know about.
    In the article I found scientists can’t count every fish in the sea; they use population density to guess about how many their are in an area. And with over fishing becoming more and more popular we have set quotas to make it so people can’t overfish. Also they talked about how they tag fish so they can track and keep a better count on fish.

    http://www.neaq.org/education_and_activities/games_and_activities/activities/counting_the_fish_in_the_sea.php

  3. I think this is a good, informative post. It’s a very interesting topic. No one has really thought how many species are in the sea. Of course, no one knows for sure but it’s amazing what is estimated. The ocean is very diverse along with all of the species in it. I found another blog post that’s interesting. Scientists estimate about 0.7-2.2 million species in the ocean. That’s not just fish though. It’s difficult to get an exact number because the ocean is so vast and new species are constantly being discovered. At the same time, species are also going extinct.
    http://ourplanet.infocentral.state.gov/2013/03/28/how-many-species-live-in-the-sea/

  4. I think this article was very interesting and well thought out. It is really cool that there are some fish that we have never seen before and that we keep discovering some more every single year. They estimate that eighty-six percent of all marine life have yet to be discovered. That is a very high percentage. All the organisms discovered are noticeable to the human eye so that leaves all the really small organisms like fungi that live way deep in the ocean undiscovered so far. The rarest types of fish live really deep in the ocean and are often overlooked. It will take a very long time to discover and classify all the organisms in the sea if it is even possible. Some of the organisms could die off before even being discovered. Also, some of them could adapt and change before they are even discovered!

    http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/08/110824-earths-species-8-7-million-biology-planet-animals-science/

  5. I was very interested by this post. The information is very clear and well thought out. I was surprised to read that 91% of all species in the oceans have yet to be discovered. It’s crazy to think that there are 230,000 species already found, but that’s not even a fraction of the amount of species yet to be discovered! Very few people get the chance to go and explore the depths of our ocean, and there is so that they could discover.
    http://ourplanet.infocentral.state.gov/2013/03/28/how-many-species-live-in-the-sea/

  6. I think you did a really good job on this post. I think your information was really good and very well put together. I was shocked to read that there were over 230,000 species of fish known to man.
    According to this article I linked more then 91% of all species have yet to be discovered. That means there are approximately 48,319,000,000 species of fish swimming in our oceans! I find that to be an insane statistic. I mean if you go swimming in the ocean you might see up to 30 species a swim. If you 30 species every time you swim you’d have to go swimming 1.6 billion times to see every species. I think it’s crazy that we think we know about a lot of marine life, but then you read this and we’ve discovered only about 9%. I don’t think we will ever discover all species just because there are so many!http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.1001127

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