“Biggest Blitz Ever” Recorded in Norway

From a recent study using a wide-scale acoustic mapping technique, oceanographers from Norway and MIT recorded “the largest predation event ever observed in the ocean” (their words) a.k.a. “the biggest blitz of all time” (my words).

This happened across the ocean from such storied “predation events” as the 2017 Eclipse Week Blitz in the Canal or the 1981 Columbus Day Blitz on Martha’s Vineyard, in the Arctic. There, a school of capelin, a small baitfish in the smelt family, gathered in a school of tens of millions of fish to spawn. That massive biomass of bait attracted a big school of cod (about 2.5 million of them!), and over the course of a few hours, the codfish ate about 50% of the capelin (about 10.5 million!).

This is the largest predation event recorded both in the numbers of individuals and the size of the area over which it took place.

Before seeing this news, I didn’t even know it was possible to quantify the size of a blitz, but the technology used, the Ocean Acoustic Waveguide Remote Sensing system is “a sonic imaging technique that employs a vertical acoustic array, attached to the bottom of a boat, to send sound waves down into the ocean and out in all directions. These waves can travel over large distances as they bounce off any obstacles or fish in their path. The same or a second boat, towing an array of acoustic receivers, continuously picks up the scattered and reflected waves, from as far as many tens of kilometers away. Scientists can then analyze the collected waveforms to create instantaneous maps of the ocean over a huge areal extent.”

I’m sure Humminbird and Garmin are working on a version of this sonar for your bass boat as we speak.

While we’ve been treated to some spectacular striped bass blitzes over the years, it’s hard to imagine any of them consisting of 2.5 million stripers (not even the 1997 National Teacher’s Appreciation Day Blitz). If you’d like to read more about this predation event, check out the MIT News Article here, and if you’re interested in a deeper dive into the science behind this technology, and why this study is taking place, check out the Nature Communications Biology article here.

Source: https://onthewater.com/biggest-blitz-ever-recorded-in-norway

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