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Can You Catch More Fish When the Water Is Spinning? 
US Source: noaa 10/24/2022
Can You Catch More Fish When the Water Is Spinning?
Credit: Pat Ford Photography
Picture the open ocean in the North Pacific: nothing but blue water as far as you can see, both out to the horizon and below you. The underwater environment may seem as uniform as it looks from above. Yet a new study shows that there are actually hotspots of biological activity which are shaped by small-scale ocean circulations.
 

Eddies are slow-moving swirls of water, or circular ocean currents, that can be tens to hundreds of miles across. They can rotate clockwise or counter-clockwise. Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center scientists Dr. Phoebe Woodworth-Jefcoats and Dr. Donald Kobayashi contributed to a new study showing that catch rates in Hawaiʻi’s longline fishery are higher in these clockwise eddies than elsewhere in the ocean. The study suggests that these eddies have a higher abundance of prey across the food web—from phytoplankton to fish.

 
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