In the heat of summer in central Greece, the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki hosted the 22nd FishBase and SeaLifeBase Symposium.
Titled “Fishes in Changing Ecosystems,” the two-day event started on September 2, 2024, with a full day dedicated to some of the overarching themes the Sea Around Us team is doing research on.
The morning session was dedicated to advances in the Gill Oxygen Limitation Theory (GOLT). Developed by Daniel Pauly in the late 1970s after assessing published data on the growth parameters of over 500 fish species in more than 1500 populations, the GOLT proposes that local conditions can influence the growth patterns of fish, but that their intrinsic growth performance is not at the mercy of such local conditions. These patterns, he showed, are determined by a major anatomical feature – the surface area of their gills.
