Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jul 20, 2026

Development of New Methods for Quantifying Fish Density Using Underwater Stereo-video Tools
Published on: November 20, 2017
The effects of oil spills on marine fish: Implications of spatial variation in natural mortality
Ø Langangen1, E Olsen2, L C Stige1
1Centre for Ecological and Evolutionary Synthesis (CEES), Department of Biosciences, University of Oslo, PO Box 1066, Blindern, N-0316 Oslo, Norway.
Abstract:
The effects of oil spills on marine biological systems are of great concern, especially in regions with high biological production of harvested resources such as in the Northeastern Atlantic. The scientific studies of the impact of oil spills on fish stocks tend to ignore that spatial patterns of natural mortality may influence the magnitude of the impact over time. Here, we first illustrate how spatial variation in natural mortality may affect the population impact by considering a thought experiment. Second, we consider an empirically based example of Northeast Arctic cod to extend the concept to a realistic setting. Finally, we present a scenario-based investigation of how the degree of spatial variation in natural mortality affects the impact over a gradient of oil spill sizes. Including the effects of spatial variations in natural mortality tends to widen the impact distribution, hence increasing the probability of both high and low impact events.
Related Concept Videos
Speciation Rates
Conservation of Declining Populations
Testing a Claim about Mean: Known Population SD
Estimating a population mean requires the samples to be distributed normally. The data should be collected from the randomly selected samples having no sampling bias. The sample size needed to be higher than 30, and most importantly, the population standard deviation should be already known.
In most realistic situations, the population standard deviation is often unknown, but in rare circumstances, when it...
Marine Microbial Ecology
Microbial Bioremediation of Hydrocarbons

