Comments on “The Antarctic toothfish (Dissostichus mawsoni): biology, ecology, and life history in the Ross Sea region,” by S. Hanchet et al.

Abstract

We expand the paper by Hanchet et al. (Hydrobiologia 761:397–414, 2015), published in Hydrobiologia, by elaborating upon neutral buoyancy, a critical aspect of Antarctic toothfish life history that was only briefly treated by those authors. Neutral buoyancy, although not common among adult notothenioid fish, is an attribute that expands the water column niche space of this species beyond that available to the bottom-dwelling toothfish that were emphasized in the review. Conversely, also not well covered in the review are the implications involved in the suspected absence of neutral buoyancy in the so-called post-spawning, fat-depleted “axe-handle” fish.