Forage Fish - in The Oceans

In The Oceans

Typical ocean forage fish are small, silvery schooling oily fish such as herring, anchovies and menhaden, and other small, schooling baitfish like capelin, smelts, sand lance, halfbeaks, pollock, butterfish and juvenile rockfish. Herrings are a preeminent forage fish, often marketed as sardines or pilchards.

The term “forage fish” is a term used in fisheries, and is applied also to forage species that are not true fish, but play a significant role as prey for predators. Thus invertebrates such as squid and shrimp are also referred to as "forage fish". Even the tiny shrimp-like creatures called krill, small enough to be eaten by other forage fish, yet large enough to eat the same zooplankton as forage fish, are often classified as "forage fish".

Forage fish utilise the biomass of copepods, mysids and krill in the pelagic zone to become the dominant converters of the enormous ocean production of zooplankton. They are, in turn, central prey items for higher trophic levels. Forage fish may have achieved their dominance because of the way they live in huge, and often extremely fast cruising schools.

Though forage fish are abundant, there are relatively few species. There are more species of primary producers and apex predators in the ocean than there are forage fish.