September 17, 2014 — Disney's hit film Finding Nemo was closer to the truth that filmmakers thought, it has been revealed.
Researchers found that clownfish, such as Nemo, really do migrate huge distances, some up to 400km.
However, unlike the film, they found in reality the fish only make the incredible journeys in their larval stage.
The study, led by Dr Steve Simpson, Senior Lecturer in Marine Biology and Global Change in Biosciences at the University of Exeter, found that six percent of the fish sampled had migrated over 400 km from one population to the other.
'This is an epic journey for these tiny week-old fish,' he said.
'When they arrive at the reef, they are less than a centimetre long, and only a few days old, so to travel hundreds of kilometres they must be riding ocean currents to assist their migration,' said Dr Simpson.
Dr Simpson led a team of undergraduate and postgraduate students from the University of Edinburgh to collect the clownfish samples from throughout southern Oman.
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