The Great Bait Ball: Unraveling the 10 Million Capelin Predation Event

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Here's a fact. Cod eat capelin. It's a pretty known

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fact. That's the main predator of capelin, whether it's on

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the east coast of North America, especially in the

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northeast coast, or if it's off the coast of Norway in

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the Atlantic. cod eat capelin. But

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just imagine how much. Because

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today we're going to be talking about one of the

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biggest predation events ever witnessed. It was back in 2014, so

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almost 10 years ago, where 10 million

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capelin were eaten by 2 million cod.

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Imagine witnessing that. Imagine seeing

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that for the first time and really thinking about how

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does this happen on a regular. How does

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this happen where it sustains the population? Well, I'm going to tell you how,

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and I'm going to tell you that the entire population of Capelin in that ball during

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that event was 23 million. So just under 50% were

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eaten. But does this happen often somewhere else? And

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what's going to happen with climate change? How's this going to be affected? And is

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this a problem for Capelin in the future? We're going to be talking about

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that all in today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. Let's

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start the show. Hey

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everybody, welcome back to another exciting episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast.

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I'm your host Andrew Luen, and this is the podcast where you find out what's happening with the

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So having three news articles, the latest podcast, the

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newsletter. That's speakupforblue.com forward slash

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newsletter. Let's get into the show. The ocean's largest

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predation event ever recorded by oceanographers.

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And it wasn't by a whale. It wasn't by a shark.

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It was by cod. It was by Atlantic cod

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eating their main prey diet, capelin. And

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in this study that was just published recently, oceanographers

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from MIT and Norway published a study

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after observing a staggeringly large predation event.

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In 2014, in the Barents Sea off the coast of Norway, over

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10 million fish were eaten in just a few hours. sort

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of spawning event so essentially what happens is the capelin come in

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and they start swimming on their own they're just chilling they're

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swimming on their own and after a while they start to dive deep

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and they dive deep and as they dive deep they get closer and closer together

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and then more get closer and closer together until they form probably

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the largest bait ball you've ever seen. Now

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capelin are used for a number of different things. They

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are used for fish bait, they're used

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for as fertilizer, they're used as food as

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a food source for select communities and so they're

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You know, they're used quite a bit, but they do tend to have these bait

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balls, and a lot of times you'll see it. They're very, like, anchovy-like fish, so they're very small.

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They're probably about this big. They're Arctic fish. They're normally

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in the North Atlantic or here in the Barents Sea, and

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they like the cold water. They like to dive deep. They like to be in a bait ball.

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Why do they go in this bait ball? It's to protect themselves. So,

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the fish in the middle will be protected from predators

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from the outside, and the fish on the outside are a bit altruistic, meaning

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that they're probably going to get eaten. There's a good chance they're probably going

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to get affected, damaged, you know, hurt in some sort of way, or

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just eaten in general, because they're on the outside of this massive bait

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ball. Now, when I say massive, I'm talking about 10 kilometers

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long. That's how big, that's how much, like 23 million

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fish in one area, 10 kilometers long. That's

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how many there were. And 10 million of those were eaten by approximately

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2 million codfish. Now you're probably wondering, how do you count? all of

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those, Andrew, like that doesn't make sense. You don't just have someone, you're just

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counting all the fish. No, this was done by a specific instrument

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that's called the Ocean Acoustic Waveguide Remote Sensing System,

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so the O-A-W-R-S. I don't know if it's called ORS or

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what have you. Scientists, we love our acronyms, right?

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But it was recorded a decade ago during an exploratory trip where

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a team of scientists used this sonic imaging technique

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known as the acoustic waveguide remote sensing system.

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This acoustic ray attached to the bottom of the vessel where it

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sends sound waves in all directions. Those waves

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are bounced off anything and everything in their

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path. So if there's fish in the way or there's anything, it bounces off. Now,

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like another set of acoustic receivers picks up the

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reflected sounds, giving the viewer an idea of

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what's happening for miles around. So it's on a screen. It's almost like how

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they do seismic surveys. When they send an acoustic

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sound to the bottom of the ocean, it bounces up. And depending

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on how it hits and how it reflects back, you get to see these

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pockets of sort of like hydrocarbon pockets, right, where you

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want to see oil and gas. In this case, you're seeing fish. Now, how

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do we tell between different species of fish? Well, it just so

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happens that cod have swim bladders. The swim bladders allow

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them to float in the water column, so they're not always sinking like

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a lot of these sharks, but you have these swim bladders.

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Cod have bigger swim bladders than the

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capelin. So when a cod has a low resonance, like

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a big bend bell, whereas capelin have tiny swim

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bladders, so the resonance tends to be high-pitched notes like piano.

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you get the difference in the pitches as they come back and the computer

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is able to decipher between those pitches. And if you just do a

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little bit of programming, these are MIT people here. I'm not sure

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what background the people in Norway have, but the MIT people

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have this coding experience and they're able to decipher between

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and show how big these bait balls are, how

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big the population of each of these different species are. So

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that was kind of cool. So the MIT paper goes

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on, and I'll link to the article in the show notes, but the MIT paper

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goes on to explain that the data was collected during the very

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heat of Capeland's spawning season. So as

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the array pinged off, Often in the early morning hours, they

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were seen to be moving mostly as individuals along

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the coast of Norway. As the day progressed, however, they swam

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deeper, perhaps in an effort to avoid the

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light of the rising sun, so they're not seen. But I think, and

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this is a quote from, I

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don't know who. But one of the people, it says,

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the team observed that as the capelin descended, they

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began shifting from individual to group behavior, individually

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forming a huge shoal of about 23 million fish that

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moved in a coordinated wave spanning over 10 kilometers

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long. That is huge. I would

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love to see sort of like a bait ball that much, or

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that much of a shoal of fish, because

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that's just cool. A shoal of fish is essentially a school of fish, but just in the large

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area and very compact. And soon the master shoal began swimming

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as one, a behavior seen in other fish and some flocks

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of birds. So just imagine a flock of birds, as

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they switch directions, they all switch directions. And the cod in

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the area responded, forming a shoal of their own of over 2 million strong.

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The cod began systematically attacking. Macris,

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who was one of the scientists on

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the study, he says it's the first

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time seeing predatory prey interaction on a huge scale, and it's

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a coherent battle of survival. So this is happening over

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a monster scale, and we're watching a wave of

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capelin zoom in, like a wave around a sports stadium, and

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they kind of gather together to form a defense. It's

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also happening with predators coming together to coherently attack.

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This is unprecedented. We've never really had the chance to

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observe such a large-scale predatory event like this.

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We've seen bait balls before, never in the 10 millions that

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we've seen. So this is great to be able to have this

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data in now. What we worry about in the

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long run is how these bait balls are going

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to be affected by climate change. We know fish

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spawning, we know currents changing, climate

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change, it all gets affected with climate

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change, right? So heating of the oceans, switching of

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currents and wind patterns in the ocean and in the atmosphere can

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really change how things are done and how

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things work and function within the ocean. you

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know it's the small fish when their larvae they get taken by

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the currents to another place and that that pattern is

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dependent on by predators and prey itself

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to run their regular life cycle as those change during

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climate change or throughout climate change this will

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change the pattern and may affect, whether short-term or long-term, whether

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it's gonna be capelin success in reproduction or the

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cod success in predating these

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fish, this prey, right, these capelins. So it

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could be a problem when we see these massive bait balls. As the

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team said, the study team said, it's like, once we get the last bait

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ball and we know it's the last population and we know

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it's gonna be a mass feeding and predation population event,

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Once they're gone, they're gone. If they don't recover fast enough to

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take on 10 million, or however many get

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eaten at that one time, that bait

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ball, that population will not recover in time. It is dependent

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on numbers. It's a numbers game. So if those numbers aren't successful

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in having 10 million more offspring, or more

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of that, or less, if it's less, then we know that the cod population is

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gonna go down. So that's, you know, these and other

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predators that depend on capelin as well. It's all going

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to be affected. It's all in a food web and it's all negatively responding

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or positively responding depending on how much reproduction we see on

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a daily, on a annual basis, semi-annual basis, you

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know, every couple of years. This is the

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problem with climate change. This is the problem with any kind of environmental disturbance

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that we see, is will we have more capelin to

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be able to witness these massive feeding events?

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I don't know. I haven't read the full study yet. I don't know if

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there have been other events after that, that it shows a pattern of

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these massive 10 million, this 10 million feeding

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event, but That's pretty cool. That's

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pretty cool to see it and be able to recover after that. So hopefully we'll see more

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recovery. I know in certain places like off the coast of Canada, capelin

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are in a critical point as well as cod is

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just over a critical point, but like slightly. And

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you know, there's been an increase in fishing for cod, Atlantic cod

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off the Atlantic coast of Canada. And so there's

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an opening of that. That could be dangerous as well. So these, these fish

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populations are not, You know,

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they're not unlimited. There is a limit to each one.

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They can go down in population depending on what happens. Climate change

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is rearing its ugly head faster and faster than we've ever seen. So

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we don't know how this is going to affect this fish population. I'll

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try and get more information and maybe try and get an interview. to talk about

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the capelin-cod-predation-prey relationship

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on that side of the Atlantic and be able to bring

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that back to you. But I thought it was an interesting story. I

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wanted to bring it to you because I think it's something that we should

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share together. And I'd love to hear your thoughts on it. Have

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you ever heard of this before? Have you ever seen any more studies?

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Who's working on this? I would love to hear. And what you think of

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the content of the topic of this $10 million strong

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bait ball. 23 million bait ball, but 10 million being consumed in less

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than a few hours. I think that's amazing. I want to hear your

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thoughts. You can hit me up on a comment on Spotify, on

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YouTube, or you can hit me up on Instagram at howtoprotecttheocean. Just

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send me a DM that's at how to protect the ocean. I

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would love to hear your thoughts on the podcast, the thoughts on this episode,

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and just your thoughts in general relating to ocean conservation and

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science. Feel free to contact me, ask me any kind of questions, I'd be more than happy to

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answer it either here or to you directly. I want to thank you

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so much for joining me on this episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. Have