Important Fish Near Extinction

Holy unseemly expletive, Batman! The main herbivore of the sea is close to extinction:

Ever heard of menhaden? Probably not, although perhaps you’re familiar with the fish’s other names: bunker, pogies, mossbacks, bugmouths, alewifes, and fat-backs. You may be surprised to learn they’re the most important fish in the Atlantic and Gulf waters.

Menhaden are the vacuum cleaners of our coasts, filtering up to four gallons of water a minute to extract phytoplankton (algae and other tiny plants). ... On land, plants are at the bottom of the food chain, eaten by many herbivores—mice, rabbits, cattle, insects, and so on. In the ocean, plants are also at the bottom of the food chain. The difference is, there’s only one main herbivore: menhaden. ...

I've talked before about the way energy flows through ecosystems, but I'll recap here.

Energy comes from the sun, plants turn it into sugar. That sugar powers every other chemical reaction in the plant's cells, and in the cells of the animals that eat the plants, and by extension, the chemical reactions in the cells of the animals who eat the animals who ate the plants.

A lot of energy gets lost at each stage. That's why eating lower down the food chain is, in general, more efficient.

In the sea, algae are the plants of the sea. Technically, they're the ancestors of plants, but they still photosynthesize. In an ecosystem based almost entirely on carnivory, animals eating other animals, the initial solar energy has to enter the system from somewhere. That somewhere, for large regions off the coasts of the US, is the digestive systems of these menhaden.

So, they're important. With that, I encourage you once more to read the rest of Alice Friedemann's Ethicurean article about the disappearing menhaden.

(Photo credit: nattarbox on Flickr.)