N,Z, ECOLOGICAL SOCIETY 19 Subantarctic Marine ' Food Cycles and Their Relation to Discontinuous Plankton Concentration

• Main Author: W. H. Dawbin
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: New Zealand; Southern Ocean; Auckland Islands
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.378.509; http://www.nzes.org.nz/nzje/free_issues/ProNZES2_19.pdf

area of land.in pr.op.orti.on t.o ocean is extremely small, and as the Southern Ocean is highly pmductive in plankt.on and capable of supp.orting en.ormous numbers f.o animals directly or indirectly, the number of vertebrates competing f.or breeding territ.ories n.o the small amount of land available is excepti.onally high. At the Auckland Islands, f.our species f.o seal and many species f.o seabird make up a vast vertebra te population of marine feeders dependent ultimately,.on plankton, The dense l.ocal concentrati.ons f.o vertebrates and f.o plankt.on make the New Zealand subantarctic islands a particularly fav.ourable site for noting at least s.ome f.o the seawnal variations in the links f.o the marine food chain