Fatty fish

Myctophids, and many other mesopelagic fish, are chock full of lipids. Some store triglycerides, and others wax esters. Since food is pretty scarce in the deep ocean, morsels with high lipid content are the meal-du-jour, so to speak.

These lipids keep the fish alive at depth by maintaining cellular structure under the extreme pressures, but they also provide organisms from higher trophic levels a calorie-dense snack in an environment where a good meal is tough to come by.

Citation: Parzanini C, Parrish CC, Hamel J-F,

Mercier A (2018) Functional diversity and

nutritional content in a deep-sea faunal assemblage

through total lipid, lipid class, and fatty acid

analyses. PLoS ONE 13(11): e0207395. https://doi.

org/10.1371/journal.pone.0207395