
Shallow-diving dovekies are opportunistically eaten by deep-sea dwelling monkfish. Photo courtesy Chris Melrose, NEFSC/NOAA.
Research aims to learn more about bird-eating fish
By Summit Voice
SUMMIT COUNTY — Everybody knows it’s a dog-eat-dog world out there, but when cute little seabirds start showing up in the stomachs of bottom-dwelling, deep-sea fish, biologists get curious.
So when USGS biologist Matthew Perry heard that New England fishermen were finding tiny dovekies inside monkfish, he decided to investigate how this previously unknown link in the ocean foodchain works.
“I was studying long-tailed ducks and thought, to avoid being eaten, these birds fly 30 to 50 miles to Nantucket Sound each night and return to the ocean in the morning,” said Perry, a research wildlife biologist at the USGS Patuxtent Wildlife Research Center in Maryland. “People ask why don’t dovekies fly to Nantucket Sound at night like the long-tailed ducks to avoid goosefish? My explanation is that dovekies have small wings and can’t make the routine flight.” (more…)
Filed under: Environment, Marine biology, ocean conservation | Tagged: dovekies, Little Auk, monkfish, Nantucket Sound, New England, oceans | Leave a Comment »


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