Ireland – Aquatic marine services – Provision of services to assess ingredient opportunities from mesopelagic resources

The global human population growth is driving demand for food, including marine proteins and lipids. Mesopelagic organisms represent the largest unexploited resource left in the world's oceans, with a recent biomass estimate of around 10 billion metric tons –10 times larger than previous estimates. Our knowledge of the mesopelagic community in terms of biodiversity, the drivers of its biomass, its role in carbon sequestration, and its interactions with the epipelagic community, including commercial fish stocks, has major gaps. The main reason for these knowledge gaps is the lack of methods to observe and sample the relatively small organisms living at depths between 200 and 1000 m. Recently there has been more focus on assessing the potential to develop commercial fisheries for the more abundant mesopelagic species. However, a significant amount of baseline information is required before this can be realised.