I was wondering about this while watching The Perfect Storm (a little over two years ago actually --GQs tend to linger in my mind for awhile.)
During a big, raging storm, how are the fish and other denizens of the sea affected? The surface is total chaos but how deep do its effects reach? Are there fish and sharks and whales just chillin’ a few feet beneath the surface? Do they head for deeper water, or become destressed or move towards calmer waters? What happens to them?
After a hurricane, we usually catch lots of deep water grouper much closer to shore. Nobody seems to know whether it’s the pressure change or the turmoil in the water, but you can count on them coming in. We have lots of wrecks and debris on the bottom that attract fish, and sometimes the storms move that stuff around some, and that’s 50-100 feet down. It would be pretty cool to be a dolphin and jump out of the water into a hurricane, though.
This is completely a WAG, but …
I’d say big storms have the effect of moving the deep-sea marine life closer in to shore as a rule. The storm surge and turbulence will tend to bring the smaller fish and animals into shallower waters, both as a result of the water movement and in search of food. (It’s rich pickin’s for small fish close to shore once the water clears a bit.) The larger fish will naturally follow the smaller fish as the whole food chain is dragged a little closer to shore.
As far as actually physically affecting fish/marine life, storms don’t do a whole lot. Some shallow-ocean fish/creatures (such as jellyfish) get hammered by storms – you can find a pile of jellyfish on the beach after a thunderstorm. Coral, too, can be negatively affected. But the larger fish, who tend to stay deeper anyway, just ride it out.
Now watch some marine biologist come in here and completely rip apart my post.
I’m basing this on the few times I’ve been at the beach after a tropical depression or small hurricane. As Dragline noted, the deep-sea fishing boats don’t go out nearly as far after those events; they don’t have to.
The effects don’t reach all that deep, so deep-sea fish aren’t affected much.
It’s more of an issue in harbors or bays, where the effects of the waves can go closer to the bottom. Fish can then be washed ashore if they’re in the wrong place.
What do seals or sea lions do,for instance like those at Fisherman’s wharf that hang out on the rafts.
Go underwater,find a cave,what?
I remember reading that when lightning hits a big body of water, such as an ocean, the charge is dissipated very widely and quickly, so only organisms within an immediate area are affected (how immediate, I don’t know).
And I think it’s been documented that fish and frogs and things have rained from the sky before, and a theory is that they were swept up in a waterspout and fell back down. So I guess some things don’t swim out of the way of big storms.
We find large numbers of starfish, sand dollars & other coveted shells on the southeastern US beach where we go after a big storm. Also jellyfish & stingrays (not coveted). Once, after a hurricane, our beach was covered with sargasso – never seen there in such quantities before.
How many hurricanes have you seen hit the San Francisco area lately? 