Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use pelagic in a sentence

15 example sentences · adjective, noun

Pelagic means living in the open sea rather than in coastal or inland waters. Example: “Besides, seeing a shark in an aquarium tank is not the same as seeing a shark in the wild, in its natural, pelagic habitat.”

Examples of pelagic by meaning

adjectiveLiving in the open sea rather than in coastal or inland waters.

  • Besides, seeing a shark in an aquarium tank is not the same as seeing a shark in the wild, in its natural, pelagic habitat.1983, Richard Ellis, The Book of Sharks, Knopf, →ISBN, page 13
  • According to their live habitat, they can be divided relatively into pelagic and benthic fish.2023 April 4, Shuang-Lin Dong, Xiang-Li Tian, Qin-Feng Gao, Yun-Wei Dong, Aquaculture Ecology, Springer Nature, →ISBN, page 342

adjectiveOf or pertaining to oceans.

  • Drifting idly around a broad oceanic arc, the bottle collides softly with tens of thousands of pelagic plastics all colonized by hard-shelled organisms, including barnacles, coralline algae, foraminifera and bivalve molluscs.2020, David Farrier, “The Bottle as Hero”, in Footprints, 4th Estate, →ISBN

More sentences with pelagic

  • Wakasagi are pelagic plankton feeders found in open lakes, streams and reservoirs.2021, “California fish species”, in University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources. From the entry wakasagi
  • All or most were pelagic, ranging from planktic serpenticones and spherocones to mobile discocones and oxycones.2013, Neil H. Landman, Kazushige Tanabe, Richard Arnold Davis, Ammonoid Paleobiology, Springer Science & Business Media, →ISBN, page 632. From the entry serpenticone
  • The young tend to occupy a pelagic habitat, but shift to a more demersal lifestyle with maturity.2003, David A. Ebert, Sharks, Rays, and Chimaeras of California, page 64. From the entry demersal
  • The gempylids, or snake mackerels, are a small group of predatory oceanic or pelagic fish.2002, S. S. Deshpande, Handbook of Food Toxicology, page 696. From the entry gempylid
  • A pelagic fish, albies have streamlined bodies, and are built to attack prey in short bursts of speed.2021, Corey Pollnow, “How to Catch Albies”, in On The Water. From the entry albie
  • These species form a clade within Acrocirridae and were not closely related to either of the two known pelagic cirratuliforms.2009 August 21, Karen J. Osborn et al., “Deep-Sea, Swimming Worms with Luminescent "Bombs"”, in Science, volume 325, number 5943, →DOI. From the entry cirratuliforms
  • Tunas and other pelagic fishes, especially mahimahi and ono (wahoo), are known to congregate under drifting objects, such as logs.1990, Hawaiian Archipelago and Johnston Island Exclusive Economic Zone, Proposed Marine Mineral Lease Sale: Environmental Impact…. From the entry ono
  • These three islands therefore exemplify, after a fashion, the Rein-Murray theory of oceanic banks, upbuilt by pelagic deposits, as atoll foundations.1976, William Morris Davis, The coral reef problem. From the entry upbuild
  • The small pelagic fish like anchovies, sardines and sardinella are all abundant species in EBUEs where they all have pelagic egg distributions.2015 October 15, “The Principles of Buoyancy in Marine Fish Eggs and Their Vertical Distributions across the World Oceans”, in PLOS ONE…. From the entry sardinella
  • Large set nets are used to catch large pelagic species such as tuna, yellowtail, and salmon as well as demersal species such as sea bream.2011, Pingguo He, Behavior of Marine Fishes: Capture Processes and Conservation Challenges, →ISBN. From the entry set net
  • Capelin is a relatively small, pelagic species found in the North-East Atlantic, the Barents Sea, Southwest of Greenland, off the coast of Labrador, and around Newfoundland.2009, Áslaug Ásgeirsdóttir, Who Gets What?, page 20. From the entry capelin
  • The penguins and Tubinares capture cuttlefish and pelagic crustaceans, the giant petrel, or "breakbones," alone obtaining part of its food on shore, since it has a relish for carrion.1922 April, Robert Cushman Murphy, “South Georgia, An Outpost of the Antarctic”, in National Geographic, volume 41, number 4, page 429. From the entry break-bones

Meaning of pelagic

  1. adjective Living in the open sea rather than in coastal or inland waters.
  2. adjective Of or pertaining to oceans.
  3. noun Any organism that lives in the open sea rather than in coastal or inland waters.

Full definition of pelagic

Questions about pelagic in a sentence

How do you use pelagic in a sentence?
Pelagic is used as an adjective and noun. For example: “Besides, seeing a shark in an aquarium tank is not the same as seeing a shark in the wild, in its natural, pelagic habitat.”
What is a short sentence with pelagic?
“Wakasagi are pelagic plankton feeders found in open lakes, streams and reservoirs.”
What does pelagic mean?
Pelagic means living in the open sea rather than in coastal or inland waters.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: pelagic (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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