Normally associated with the cooler seas around the poles, Orca whales are now becoming an increasingly common sight off the coast of UK. The Orca whale – also known as Killer whale, Blackfish and Seawolf – is found in all the world’s oceans and in most seas, including the Mediterranean and Arabian Seas. It is however known to prefer the cool waters of the polar regions, which makes this boom in recent sightings around the British Isles quite surprising for marine biologists.

This year alone, Orca whales have been spotted in locations such the English Channel, the Irish Sea, and near Hartlepool in the North Sea. The southernmost sightings in UK waters took place near the Isles of Scilly, an archipelago off the south-western tip of England.

According to Andy Foote, PhD Student at the University of Aberdeen, pods of over 100 Orcas have been seen around the Shetland Islands this summer.

“That sort of sighting does seem to be on the increase,” says Foote. “The killer whales shift their migration and distribution quite drastically. Fish like herring and mackerel seem to be doing pretty well at the moment, and it makes sense for the killer whales to follow them.”

Orca whales have been a rare sight in UK waters since fishing stocks began to decline dramatically in the mid 1900s, and the perceived increase in sightings has therefore been interpreted as a sign of recovering fishing stocks. It is however hard to know anything for sure yet, since no records of Orca sightings exists from earlier years. Researchers from the University of Aberdeen and the Sea Mammals Research Unit at St Andrews are currently monitoring the waters off Scotland, to investigate if the increase in sightings is correlated to an actual increase in Orca whales in UK waters or if it is simply the result of better recording methods.

During the second half of the 20^th century, Orca sightings in UK waters have normally been viewed as transient animals migrating through the area, but researchers have now been able to determine that the same individuals are in fact recurrently spotted off the British coast, by comparing 2008 sightings with photographs taken of Orca whales over the past decade.

“Until now, very little has been known about them in British waters, Foote explains. They have been considered as being transient and occasional animals that just move through the area. People thought they were very infrequent visitors. The fact that we are seeing the same ones year after year after year shows that that is wrong. Already we have highlighted that we have populations which are resident here for long periods of time, coming back to the same place, year after year after year, while some seem to remain all year around.

Paul Harvey from the Shetland Biological Records Centre agrees with Foote. “We are definitely seeing more. We know we’ve got the same animals returning and we have some occurring here throughout the winter. It is a relatively recent phenomenon. If you talk to fishermen, they just didn’t used to see them. Now, they see them every time they haul their nets. Something has gone on, since about the 1990s, when we first started to see more. We don’t know how many pods we are dealing with. That is the value of the new research.“

A UK-Japan team equipped with remote-operated landers has now managed to film a shoal of Pseudoliparis amblystomopsis fish at a depth of 7.7 km (4.8 mi) in the Japan Trench, where the oceanic Pacific plate subducts beneath the continental Eurasian plate.

The deepest record for any fish – over 8 km / 5 mi – is held by the species Abyssobrotula galatheae, but this fish was never filmed or observed while it was alive; it was dredged from the bottom of the Puerto Rico Trench and already dead when it reached the surface.

The Pseudoliparis amblystomopsis film shows the fish darting around in the dark, scooping up shrimps. The shoal consists of no less than 17 specimens, with the largest ones being around 30 cm (12 in) in length.

“It was an honour to see these fish“, says Dr Alan Jamieson, Research Fellow at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland. “No-one has ever seen fish alive at these depths before – you just never know what you are going to see when you get down there.

The filming took place as a part of the Hadeep project; a collaboration between the Oceanlab at the University of Aberdeen and the Ocean Research Institute at the University of Tokyo. The aim of the project, which is funded by the Nippon Foundation and the Natural Environment Research Council, is to find out more about life in the very deepest parts of the world’s oceans.

Just like the unfortunate Abyssobrotula galatheae, deep sea fishes tend to be in a sad state when researchers examine them at the surface and this is one of the reasons why a film is such great news for anyone interested in learning more about what’s going on at these vast depts.

According to Professor Monty Priede, also from the University of Aberdeen, the team was surprised by the fish’s behaviour. “We certainly thought, deep down, fish would be relatively inactive, saving energy as much as possible, and so on,” says Priede. “But when you see the video, the fish are rushing around, feeding accurately, snapping at prey coming past.“

Oceanographers normally divide the deep sea into three different depth zones:

• The Bathyal, which is located between 1,000 and 3,000 m (3,000 and 10,000 ft)
• The Abyss, which is located between 3,000 and 6,000 m (10,000 and 20,000 ft)
• The Hadal, which is located between 6,000 and 11,000 m (20,000 and 36,000 ft)

The Hadeep project has been looking at the creatures inhabiting the Hadal zone, which consists of comparatively narrow trenches in the wide abyss. In this environment there is no light and the pressure is immense. The food supply is also very limited, since photosynthesising organisms can not survive and most other creatures stay away as well. The animals living in the Hadal zone must therefore rely on food sinking down to them from more fruitful waters above.

In order to cope with pressure, Hadal dwellers display numerous physiological modifications, primarily at the molecular level. They have also developed various ways of dealing with the constant night and Pseudoliparis amblystomopsis is for instance equipped with vibration receptors on its snout which comes in handy when the fish navigates through the darkness and searches for food.

Dr Alan Jamieson now hopes that the Japan-UK team will find more fish during their next expedition down into the Haldal zone, which is planned to take place in March 2009 and aims to venture as far down as 9,000 m (30,000 ft).”Nobody has really been able to look at these depths before – I think we will see some fish living much deeper,” says Jamieson, whose deep-sea blog from the expedition can be found at Planet Earth Online.

You can also read more about this story over at deep sea news, a great blog if you want to keep up to date on deep sea discoveries.

Koi carp worth almost £40,000 (=80 000USD) was stolen from a garden center in Stapleford UK. The thieves cut their way into the facility through metal fences and stole the expensive Koi carps. The thieves are believed to have know carps and the facility well as they only stole the most valuable carps living the rest. All in all they stole 30 carps. They also caused 20 000 USD damage to the garden center.

The thieves drained the holding tank on much of its water to make it easier to catch the carps. The police says it was a professional well organized heist that would have taken a lot of time to complete. They also ask for help form the public and that anyone who knows anything about this to contact them.

The owner has given the police pictures of the fish so that they can be identified and the owner is sure that the fish can be identified if found.

If you live in the UK and see expensive Koi fish for sale in the classifieds it might be worth contacting the police to see if it is these carps however seeing as it seems to have been a professional job the likely allready had a new home in mind for the fish.