This is the large round fish, about the size of a manhole cover that uses its warm blood as a protection from the freezing depth in the oceans.
The deep water fish named Opah seems to be the first fully warm-blooded fish species ever discovered and the first one to be seen that is according to a new paper published in Science. Researchers and scientists say that the one of kind biology behind Opah, which is also known as moonfish _ any of several deep-bodied silvery carangid fishes, occurring in warm and tropical American coastal waters _ allows the species to operate at peak performance even with the existence of freezing ocean depth.
“It’s a real advantage if you’re in this deep, cold habitat and you’re swimming around with a warm body,” says Nick Wegner, an NOAA fisheries biologist and lead author on the paper. “It increases the rates of all the reactions that occur within the body _ you can swim faster, see better, react faster and capture cold-bodied prey that are not able to respond nearly as quickly.”
Opah which is very large, with colorful tires thrives in the deep sea is an increasingly known seafood. Although that Wegner had been studying Opah for several years, he lately realized that warm blood vessels leaving the fish’s heart wrap around cooler blood vessels returning from its gills. Opah's internal heating system can keep its heart and brain peak performance despite the depth of up to 1.300 feet.
“Opah is the first fish that can circulate warm blood throughout the entire body, and that gives it some advantages over tuna and shark species,” Wegner says. “Since they can keep their entire bodies warm, they can stay down deep, continuously close to their forage base.”
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