pelagic
/pɪˈladʒɪk
/adjective technical
1Relating to the open sea: the kittiwakes return from their pelagic winter wanderings...
- Most deep-sea trenches in the Pacific are floored by normal basaltic oceanic crust overlain by pelagic sediments and ash.
- The pelagic environment is further divided based on water depth.
- Aquatic ecologists have many models for size distributions of pelagic communities.
1.1(Chiefly of fish) inhabiting the upper layers of the open sea: there are very few pelagic fish to be seen...Often contrasted with demersal.
- Adult beluga sturgeon are mainly piscivores, swimming at middle depths and preying mostly on pelagic fish species.
- Among coastal river otters in this region, sociality could be explained by the benefits obtained from cooperative foraging on high-quality schooling pelagic fishes.
- Under such conditions, we predict that more social otters would have diets higher in better quality pelagic fishes, compared with otters that exhibit low levels of sociality.
1.2(Of a bird) inhabiting the open sea and returning to the shore only to breed.The Northern Gannet is a large pelagic bird that only comes ashore to breed....
- Whales have been scarce, and the pelagic birds are feeding close to shore.
- Usually you can expect to see great numbers of pelagic birds - gannets, shearwaters, jaegers, storm-petrels, alcids - that live mainly at sea.
noun
A pelagic fish or bird.Turtles, large shoals of fish and pelagics including hammerhead, sharks, manta rays and whale sharks are often encountered....
- But we are also worried because in order to feed these tuna the industry needs other fleets which should fish for the small pelagics to be fed to tuna.
- There also tends to be more current here, preferred by some of the larger reef fishes and the pelagics.
Origin
Mid 17th century: via Latin from Greek pelagikos, from pelagios 'of the sea' (from pelagos 'level surface of the sea').