This phenomenon was recorded 3 years ago. In 2008, a huge school of sardines, a small bone fish of the genus Sardinops, sailed to the coastal waters of the Philippine island of Pescador, near the island of Cebu
It is known that sardines go into large shoals during spawning, but this has never been observed near the Philippines, moreover, these clusters are seasonal, and the fish stock at Pescador not only has not disappeared, but continues to grow every year.
The underwater incident soon attracted the interest of both professional divers and thrill-seekers alike. This year, at the invitation of the Philippine government, the film crew of underwater photographer Mikhail Semyonov visited Pescador Island and took amazing pictures.
“We were the first professional team to take photos and videos of the phenomenon,” says Mikhail Semenov. - To be honest, what I saw made a shocking impression. Imagine a colossal mass of fish closes over your head and begins its dance; twilight sets in under the water, only the exhaled air creates light windows, the fish parted from the bubbles, and a thin ray of light falls to the bottom, which immediately disappears."
Thanks to special sensors, each fish feels the dynamics of its neighbors, and the movement of the school is absolutely synchronous, as if an invisible director controls the whole action. “The jamb behaves like a single organism, changing the direction of movement in a second, and the whole ball of sardine is transformed into ribbons, or floating clouds, or scary figures in which human faces are visible,” continues Mikhail. - The fish rub against each other, a rustling is heard, which intensifies when the flock begins to move. Sardines are constantly shedding scales, shimmering in the light of our shooting lights, adding to the stunning effect."
At first, the sardines were afraid of boats and hurried away from potential danger, creating large concentric circles. But over time, the fish got used to people, and divers had to dive into the "sardine bath".
Photo: Credit unknown / goodnewsanimal.ru
Photo: Credit unknown / goodnewsanimal.ru
Photo: Credit unknown / goodnewsanimal.ru
Promotional video:
Photo: Credit unknown / goodnewsanimal.ru
Photo: Credit unknown / goodnewsanimal.ru
Ichthyologists and oceanographers cannot yet explain what caused the "Filipino cluster" of sardines. The Pacific sardine fishery is developed off the coasts of North and South America, Japan, Australia and South Africa. However, only small populations of this herring fish previously lived off the coast of the Philippines. Scientists from the All-Russian Scientific Research Institute of Fisheries and Oceanography suggest that the appearance of large schools of some commercial fish, including sardines, in unexpected places is associated with the El Niño phenomenon. This is the name of the large-scale warm current that occurs in the Pacific Ocean and causes tragic consequences. Warm waters, poor in plankton, drive out cold currents favorable for sardines. Cold currents change direction. Sardines prefer coolness and also change their traditional habitat to follow the changing course of the current.“A redistribution of sardine clusters of a similar scale was recorded in 1983 off the coast of Peru,” says ichthyologist Alexander Grechina, “then the catastrophic El Niño was the cause.”
Photo: Credit unknown / goodnewsanimal.ru
Photo: Credit unknown / goodnewsanimal.ru
Photo: Credit unknown / goodnewsanimal.ru
There are, however, other versions. Some researchers note that the sardine may have migrated to escape serious danger, such as whale sharks. However, this strategic move of the fish clan is completely illogical: the island of Pescador has enough sharks too. And predators, together with divers, willingly destroy the wall of mouth-watering sardines, which begins almost at the surface of the water and ends at a depth of 30 meters. So it is possible that the school of fish was simply nailed to the Philippine coast by the high tide. Something similar happened in March of this year in the Californian harbor of Redondo Beach, but then about a million fish died in a confined space from lack of oxygen - Filipino sardines were more fortunate, and they decided to settle in a new place.
The fishery for sardine-sardinops reaches 500 thousand tons per year, and they fish not only for the sake of canned food we are used to: in Europe, for example, in supermarkets you can buy margarine with sardine fat. The volume of fishing has not yet exceeded the permissible norms, but a sardine tornado would not have arisen without disturbing the ecological balance. Maybe nature is sending people warning signs, resorting to the help of small silver fish?