site.btaNatural History Museum to Add Eight Species of Fish from Livingston Island to Its Collection

A total of eight species of fish for the ichthyological collections of the National Museum of Natural History of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences will be brought by Assoc. Prof. Dr. Tihomir Stefanov from the Livingston Island aquarium. He also managed to capture a new species - Parachaenichthys charcoti.

"My project on Livingston Island is related to the biological and species diversity of fish in the area. So far - halfway through my stay, the project is going extremely well. With the help of the logistics team at the base, we have managed to do several entries and a dozen surveys. The interesting data that I received complements very well the picture that I had from my previous visits," said in an interview with BTA Assoc. Prof. Dr. Tihomir Stefanov. According to him, the spatial distribution of individual fish species can now be very well assessed. There is a very interesting distribution in relation to the depth at which they occur, he noted.

"The two main fish species that create over 90% of the biomass in the region are the two Notothenia species, the Notothenia coriiceps, and the Notothenia rossi. They inhabit a relatively wide range of depths, but their biomass is mainly concentrated in shallower areas. We even manage to see single specimens swimming almost to the shore - practically down to ten centimetres deep," the scientist said.

It is the fact that the bulk of their populations are concentrated in the shallower areas of the shelf zone, the shallow coastal zone of Livingston Island, that drives the other species, which are much smaller in size - such as the two Trematomus species - to be distributed in the slightly greater depths, where they avoid the competition on the one hand, and the predation of these two large dominant species on the other.

"The interesting addition we found had to do with the biology of so-called icefish. The icefish (Chaenocephalus aceratus) turned out to be much more widespread here than we first thought. It forms colonies that are made up of a male and a female, with the male making a kind of nest on the seabed, where he invites the female and she spawns in this nest, which the male then guards," said Prof. Stefanov. He explained that these colonies on Livingston Island are located at greater depths - somewhere beyond 40, 50 to 60-65 metres. However, the species is also found at shallower depths, with one of the specimens caught over the years at 12m. “We often catch fish at depths of 25-30 m, so their distribution also varies in depth,” the researcher said. According to the data collected so far, it can be said that the bulk of the colony is at a depth of 60m.

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During the 32nd Bulgarian expedition to Antarctica, which started on November 8, 2023, the Bulgarian News Agency (BTA) is publishing interviews with Antarctic researchers. The Bulgaria-Antarctica BTA's Log again provides coverage of the voyage of the Sv. Sv. Kiril i Metodii to Antarctica and back and its stay there, as it did during the 31st expedition between December 27, 2022 and May 2, 2023. Back then, only BTA had a correspondent, Daily News Editor Konstantin Karagyozov, who covered the 127-day expedition with text, video and photos during the entire voyage (including across the Atlantic in both directions) and throughout the stay in Antarctica. In June 2023, BTA published in Bulgarian and in English an issue of its LIK magazine "To Antarctica and Back under the Bulgarian Flag" dedicated to the historic expedition.

Again, all of BTA's information on the Bulgarian scientific research in Antarctica and the support provided by the Bulgarian naval research vessel, as well as on the other activities at the Bulgarian Antarctic Base, will be available to all media outlets in Bulgarian and in English on BTA's website in the Bulgaria - Antarctica: BTA's Log section.

BTA has a National Press Club on board the ship and is planning to open a National Press Club at the Bulgarian Antarctic Base on Livingston Island.