Ancient deep-sea fish faces extinction after decades of destructive fishing practices

Deep beneath the ocean’s surface swims one of nature’s most remarkable survivors—the orange roughy, a fish that can live for an extraordinary 250 years, making it among the longest-lived creatures in the deep sea. These ancient fish have been gliding through ocean depths since before the Industrial Revolution, with some individuals alive today potentially hatching during the reign of King George III.

However, this incredible longevity has become both the orange roughy’s greatest asset and its fatal weakness. The same biological traits that allow these fish to survive for centuries—extremely slow growth rates and late sexual maturity—have made them particularly vulnerable to modern fishing pressures. Orange roughy don’t begin reproducing until they’re 20-30 years old, and they produce relatively few offspring compared to other fish species.

Bottom trawling operations in Australian and New Zealand waters have targeted these slow-moving fish for decades, using massive nets that scrape along the ocean floor to capture entire schools. This fishing method has proven devastatingly effective against orange roughy populations, which gather in predictable spawning aggregations that make them easy targets for commercial fishers.

Marine biologists now warn that the damage may be irreversible. The combination of the species’ slow reproductive rate and the intensive fishing pressure they’ve endured means that orange roughy populations may have already collapsed beyond their ability to recover. What took nature centuries to build, industrial fishing has potentially destroyed in just a few decades, highlighting the urgent need for better protection of deep-sea ecosystems and their ancient inhabitants.