Talk:Pelagic zone

Hydrothermal vents

The lower sections (ie. hadopelagic) state that very few organisms live there. In most areas, that may be true, but that certainly is not true for organisms near hydrothermal vents, which do not depend on above layers for food (they get it from the vent stream). Not much is known about them, but they certainly have lots of life nearby them (from cuurent data) and they are an exciting field of reaserch currently. I will add the info about the vents to the article, because it is relevant. Polonium 12:39, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

So what IS "Benthopelagic"?

The term benthopelagic redirects here, however the article doesn't even mention it. It would be nice to at least explain how the two terms relate. 71.217.98.158 20:11, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, the term benthopelagic seems to refer to fish and other ocean life, rather than to a zone in the water column itself. The definitions I can find on the web seem to refer to organisms which regularly transit between the seafloor and the open water, whether to feed, spawn, etc. I agree - either the definition should be included here, or (I think more properly) the redirect should point to a different page. PaladinWhite 23:16, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

I got here the same way, by looking for Benthopelagic. Pal~ is correct, Benthopelagic refers to ocean life. Benthic organisms live on the bottom of a body of water. Benthopelagic ones range from teh bottom to the midwaters, occassionally to the surface. The redirect makes no sense; there is no palegic zone that fits this term. I will work towards a new page and a removal of the redir. Pawthorn 20:00, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

See benthopelagic. --Geronimo20 (talk) 04:37, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Conflicting statements

"The pelagic zone is the part of the open sea or ocean that is not near the [...] sea floor" seems to conflict with the lower-zone definitions, eg. "Abyssopelagic (from 4000 m down to above the ocean floor)". Which is more correct? PaladinWhite 23:16, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, "pelagic" refers to "open ocean." The original Greek probably meant "ocean out of sight of land;" in the modern world, it probably is best used to mean "ocean beyond the edges of the continental shelves." I'd remove the words "sea floor" from the opening paragraph (and I have decided to be bold, and done it); it's the floors of the continental shelves that count, not the entire sea floor. --DrGaellon (talk | contribs) 23:35, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Cruft v. cruft

I am pretty new to contributing here so maybe I don't understand.

Please explain why a reference to pelagic within Star Trek not cruft while a reference from Finding Nemo is?

I am also not sure if this is where I should ask this question or if I should be doing it on the page of the person who reverted my contribution.

Rblinlv 17:36, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Note: this question has been answered +A.0u 04:13, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

pelagic

it so rocks —Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.100.72.121 (talk) 23:43, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Oxygen and nutrient levels.

I wish this article on pelagic zones included more information about oxygen and nutrient levels in different zones. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.135.47.72 (talk) 22:19, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

So what IS the pelagic zone?

a sentence, at the beginning of the article, might just be a good idea --Mongreilf (talk) 21:58, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

well it got better, but wasn't quite in layman's terms, so i added a bit from the simple english wikipedia's entry--Mongreilf (talk) 20:29, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Honestly I still don't think it is at all clear. Currently the fist sentence says, "Any water in the sea that is not close to the bottom is in the pelagic zone." The illustration on the left doesn't actually show a pelagic zone, it shows five sub-zones. However, the abyssopelagic and hadopelagic appear to be close to the bottom, with the abysso *on* the bottom and the hado *in* the sea floor. The article isn't making it clear whether the pelagic zone has to be some distance away from the coast or the continental shelf, or not. Perhaps this is all clear to those who understand what the pelagic zone is, but I don't, and after reading the article I still don't. If the term is used somewhat inconsistently, that's fine. I am left thinking that the pelagic zone is all the water in the ocean that is just water, and not the watery part of the ocean that extends into the sea floor (like where clams live, in mudbanks and sandbars, which have water in them but are mostly solid sediment). Whether pelagic is "open ocean" (i.e., far from the coasts), I'm not sure.--Wmjames (talk) 21:16, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

I think the confusion about current usage arises because there are two basically different mindsets you can have when thinking about the sea. The first is thinking about the sea as you might view it from the surface, like a sailor on a boat. The second is thinking about the sea as a body of water, like a fish might if it were also an oceanographer. I suppose ancient Greeks thought about the sea more in the first way, and modern oceanographers think about the sea more in the second way. If you are thinking about the sea as a body of water, then the pelagic zone is the water that is not near the bottom; that is, the free water that is not significantly controlled by what is going on in the sediment at the immediate bottom. If you are thinking about the sea as you would see it from the deck of a boat, then the pelagic zone is "out there" where it is deep, away from the coast.

In fact, the deep ocean also has a benthic zone at the bottom and a demersal zone immediately above the bottom. This has certainly been recognised in recent decades with the development of demersal fisheries, such as orange roughy, in the deep ocean or supposedly "pelagic" zones. And likewise coastal waters, where they are not too shallow, have pelagic zones in the upper water inhabited by pelagic fish.

It is worth looking through the google definitions for "pelagic". The confusion is clearly apparent. And I guess our job is to reflect something of that confusion, since it is not the role of an encyclopaedia to be prescriptive. But for what its worth, I think the defintion of pelagic as being water that is not near the bottom is the more useful and scientific one. And hopefully there is a trend away from thinking of it as just open ocean. But I can find no citations discussing this.

The benthic zone is not shown in the diagram, because it is the actual rock and sediment at the bottom. It is inhabited by the benthos (clams, star fish, anemones, crabs, snails, worms) that bed themselves there or burrow through the sediment. It is generally only centimetres deep and would not show on the diagram except as a line. The demersal zone just above the benthic zone, is the zone inhabited by demersal fish (flatfish, cod, snapper) that feed off the benthos. This zone is defined by the essential activity that is taking place there, which is feeding off the bottom. So again, the demersal zone would be too thin to show up in the diagram, and would be included in the thickness of the line defining the bottom.

I tried to indicate something of this in the article without labouring the point too much. I guess there is still a way to go... sigh... --Geronimo20 (talk) 02:10, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, I know one of the tenants of WP is "help improve", well maybe "help improve when you can" and since I'm not an oceanographer (but I love the ocean and science) I can't actually help improve the page for the general audience (which includes myself). But I thought pointing out that although cool the page still left me a bit confused might be useful to some small extent. Maybe can you take some scientific definitions from WP citable sources and explain them or something? If you aren't an ocean scientist maybe one will stop by at some point... --Wmjames (talk) 00:57, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Pelagic fish and birds

There are links to the pelagic page that refer to pelagic fish and birds. It would probably be a good idea to have at least one sentence saying what a pelagic bird or fish is.
Pnelnik (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 13:59, 13 July 2009 (UTC).

Yes, thanks. A good idea. I've added a section on each of these. --Geronimo20 (talk) 09:11, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Thank you. Pnelnik (talk) 22:33, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

Sooty tern -- photo caption

The photo caption says, "The pelagic sooty tern spends years flying at sea without returning to land." Although I don't know anything about sooty terns, I suspect that this unreferenced statement is not accurate. It would be quite something for a bird to spend years flying. Franklinjefferson (talk) 05:20, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Yes, seems a bit over the top. I've qualified the caption and added a reference. The photo was taken from seabird, so I've modified that as well. You know, you could have done this yourself. That is really what being an editor is about. --Geronimo20 (talk) 07:02, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Double secret midnight

What is this "midnight" nonsense? Is hadalpelagic super ultra midnight? This serves no purpose and should be deleted.132.239.112.44 (talk) 20:01, 6 September 2017 (UTC)

Nonsense? Did you make the slightest effort to check the matter before sounding off like this? No you didn't. You could start here or look at these references in books --Epipelagic (talk) 10:14, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

Do you have any sources that discuss the "lower midnight zone" as being the same thing as the abyssopelagic? To be fair, this article needs work. TheDoormouse (talk) 04:42, 8 September 2017 (UTC)

Yes, it could be expressed more clearly. The "midnight zone" refers to everything below the mesopelagic, and in the article the descriptor "lower" was added to qualify the part below the bathypelagic. "Midnight zone" is a formal term defined in many textbooks, but "lower midnight zone" is not a formal term. I suppose informally the bathypelagic, abyssopelagic and hadopelagic could be described respectively as the upper-, middle- and lower-midnight zones, but these are not formal terms defined in textbooks (though some do use the term "lower midnight"). Perhaps the term "lower midnight" could just be omitted. How would you suggest rewording the article? --Epipelagic (talk) 09:23, 8 September 2017 (UTC)

I've added this to my short list of articles I'd like to work on, so I'll think about it. If we are going to include those terms, it might help to clarify what they mean, because currently they are just in parenthesis without explanation. I'm pretty new here, do other articles ever have sections like "Other terminologies" or something similar? Or maybe just a sentence or two in each section like "The mesopelagic is commonly referred to as the twilight zone because..." and remove the parenthesis. TheDoormouse (talk) 04:35, 9 September 2017 (UTC)

Yes, you could have a section called "Other terminologies" if you think that is the way to go. --Epipelagic (talk) 06:33, 9 September 2017 (UTC)

Media not displaying correctly here

Today the image referred to in the first paragraph is missing. The photo displays correctly in editor view, but I'm not skilled enough to fix it. CaedMcG (talk) 22:00, 20 June 2021 (UTC)