Two hundred meters below the surface of the sea is a cold, faintly lit layer of water known as the mesopelagic, or twilight, zone. Here lives a menagerie of peculiar-looking creatures: blue-glowing plankton and squid; spindly fish flashing kaleidoscopes of colors, some baring rows of barbed teeth. Many of these creatures lurk in this region’s dark depths, while others pass through it as they flit between the surface and the deep ocean, partaking in a daily migration. Due to the constant movement of these fish, they’re notoriously hard to catch, and thus far, the mesopelagic zone has remained relatively unexploited. If these animals are caught and brought to the surface, many turn into a kind of gelatinous goop. Yet Norwegian fisher Karsten Østervold said he believes he’s found a way to handle these strange, gloppy fish. In his opinion, the key is to quickly process and preserve them, and his family business, MESO, a fishing company based in Bekkjarvik, Norway, has built a prototype system for doing so right on board the trawler. “Mesopelagic fish contains a lot of enzymes in the belly, and when it’s harvested and comes onboard the fishing vessel, it very quickly deteriorates — the quality is very fast getting bad,” Østervold told Mongabay. “So it’s very difficult to harvest with conventional fishing vessels and to process it with conventional fishmeal factories.” Many types of mesopelagic fish aren’t considered edible by people, so a target product for twilight-zone fish is silage, a liquid typically made from…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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