How Many Fish Are Still Alive?
The ocean is said to be one of Earth’s life support, and it contains 97% of the world’s water source. People rely on it to regulate the climate and absorb all the CO2, and it is the source of protein for billions of people. Plenty of fish in the sea exists, but most people wonder how many are they considering there are still undiscovered parts of the ocean.
How many fish are still alive? There is no way up to this writing to determine the number of fish which still live in the ocean. But a lot of experts believe that the number of fish in the oceans is at 3,500,000,000,000.
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In this short read, you will have an idea of how they count fish and the importance of counting to our ecosystem. Let’s get into it.
Methods Used To Count Fish
To know how much is alive is a daunting and nearly impossible task. These numbers are changing because of many factors, such as fishing, predation, reproduction, and environment changes.
Eighteen thousand fish species have been identified living in the ocean with other sea creatures. And there are plenty of ways and methods to count fish.
The most popular practice is through submarines, different satellites, and GPS sensors placed on the creatures. Divers play a significant role in performing a variety of fish census as they can go underwater and take pictures as part of the documentation process.
Some scientists have also have been developing another way to count fish by using Artificial Intelligence. All data that were gathered will be fed in the computer system for a better and easier analysis.
These data are collected from the estimates together with the other information that is deduced.
Importance Of Counting Fish
Counting fish is not just merely calculating from tens, hundreds, or even thousands. Taking stock of the number of fish present in the ocean is an essential task.
It is necessary to be able to predict the amount of fish so that they can estimate how many of them can be taken out. The population of fishes must remain sustainable.
These records are essential so that fishery management can implement an effective and efficient way of fishery trends. This information then empowers fishery communities as well as the government to make decisions on how they handle ocean resources.
Once they have their final say, some legal limits will be placed on fishing. It includes the size and some gear equipment restrictions to preserve the fish populations. Counting fish is also crucial for researchers to predict or show the extent of unknown alien species.
It can lead to new discoveries of different aquatic species that can affect the existing aquatic ecosystem.
Conclusion
To summarize, finding how many fish are alive is still an unknown question, but researchers are doing different methods to come up with an answer. Their goals are to have an ecosystem-based assessment, and this can help in the population of aquatic species in general. Gathering information and getting better data will make better decisions for making fish populations sustainable.
