Finding mesopelagic prey in a changing Southern Ocean
Mesopelagic fish and squid occupy ocean depths extending below the photic zone and their vertical migrations represent a massive pathway moving energy and carbon through the water column. Their spatio-temporal distribution is however, difficult to map across remote regions particularly the vast Sout...
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ftpubmed:oai:pubmedcentral.nih.gov:6908696 2023-05-15T13:43:29+02:00 Finding mesopelagic prey in a changing Southern Ocean McMahon, Clive R. Hindell, Mark A. Charrassin, Jean-Benoit Corney, Stuart Guinet, Christophe Harcourt, Robert Jonsen, Ian Trebilco, Rowan Williams, Guy Bestley, Sophie 2019-12-12 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6908696/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31831763 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-55152-4 en eng Nature Publishing Group UK http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6908696/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31831763 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-55152-4 © The Author(s) 2019 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. CC-BY Article Text 2019 ftpubmed https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-55152-4 2019-12-22T01:25:52Z Mesopelagic fish and squid occupy ocean depths extending below the photic zone and their vertical migrations represent a massive pathway moving energy and carbon through the water column. Their spatio-temporal distribution is however, difficult to map across remote regions particularly the vast Southern Ocean. This represents a key gap in understanding biogeochemical processes, marine ecosystem structure, and how changing ocean conditions will affect marine predators, which depend upon mesopelagic prey. We infer mesopelagic prey vertical distribution and relative abundance in the Indian sector of the Southern Ocean (20° to 130°E) with a novel approach using predator-derived indices. Fourteen years of southern elephant seal tracking and dive data, from the open ocean between the Antarctic Polar Front and the southern Antarctic Circumpolar Current front, clearly show that the vertical distribution of mesopelagic prey is influenced by the physical hydrographic processes that structure their habitat. Mesopelagic prey have a more restricted vertical migration and higher relative abundance closer to the surface where Circumpolar Deep Water rises to shallower depths. Combining these observations with a future projection of Southern Ocean conditions we show that changes in the coupling of surface and deep waters will potentially redistribute mesopelagic prey. These changes are small overall, but show important spatial variability: prey will increase in relative abundance to the east of the Kerguelen Plateau but decrease to the west. The consequences for deep-diving specialists such as elephant seals and whales over this time scale will likely be minor, but the changes in mesoscale vertical energy flow have implications for predators that forage within the mesopelagic zone as well as the broader pelagic ecosystem. Text Antarc* Antarctic Elephant Seal Elephant Seals Southern Elephant Seal Southern Ocean PubMed Central (PMC) Antarctic Indian Kerguelen Southern Ocean The Antarctic Scientific Reports 9 1 |
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Article McMahon, Clive R. Hindell, Mark A. Charrassin, Jean-Benoit Corney, Stuart Guinet, Christophe Harcourt, Robert Jonsen, Ian Trebilco, Rowan Williams, Guy Bestley, Sophie Finding mesopelagic prey in a changing Southern Ocean |
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Mesopelagic fish and squid occupy ocean depths extending below the photic zone and their vertical migrations represent a massive pathway moving energy and carbon through the water column. Their spatio-temporal distribution is however, difficult to map across remote regions particularly the vast Southern Ocean. This represents a key gap in understanding biogeochemical processes, marine ecosystem structure, and how changing ocean conditions will affect marine predators, which depend upon mesopelagic prey. We infer mesopelagic prey vertical distribution and relative abundance in the Indian sector of the Southern Ocean (20° to 130°E) with a novel approach using predator-derived indices. Fourteen years of southern elephant seal tracking and dive data, from the open ocean between the Antarctic Polar Front and the southern Antarctic Circumpolar Current front, clearly show that the vertical distribution of mesopelagic prey is influenced by the physical hydrographic processes that structure their habitat. Mesopelagic prey have a more restricted vertical migration and higher relative abundance closer to the surface where Circumpolar Deep Water rises to shallower depths. Combining these observations with a future projection of Southern Ocean conditions we show that changes in the coupling of surface and deep waters will potentially redistribute mesopelagic prey. These changes are small overall, but show important spatial variability: prey will increase in relative abundance to the east of the Kerguelen Plateau but decrease to the west. The consequences for deep-diving specialists such as elephant seals and whales over this time scale will likely be minor, but the changes in mesoscale vertical energy flow have implications for predators that forage within the mesopelagic zone as well as the broader pelagic ecosystem. |
format |
Text |
author |
McMahon, Clive R. Hindell, Mark A. Charrassin, Jean-Benoit Corney, Stuart Guinet, Christophe Harcourt, Robert Jonsen, Ian Trebilco, Rowan Williams, Guy Bestley, Sophie |
author_facet |
McMahon, Clive R. Hindell, Mark A. Charrassin, Jean-Benoit Corney, Stuart Guinet, Christophe Harcourt, Robert Jonsen, Ian Trebilco, Rowan Williams, Guy Bestley, Sophie |
author_sort |
McMahon, Clive R. |
title |
Finding mesopelagic prey in a changing Southern Ocean |
title_short |
Finding mesopelagic prey in a changing Southern Ocean |
title_full |
Finding mesopelagic prey in a changing Southern Ocean |
title_fullStr |
Finding mesopelagic prey in a changing Southern Ocean |
title_full_unstemmed |
Finding mesopelagic prey in a changing Southern Ocean |
title_sort |
finding mesopelagic prey in a changing southern ocean |
publisher |
Nature Publishing Group UK |
publishDate |
2019 |
url |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6908696/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31831763 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-55152-4 |
geographic |
Antarctic Indian Kerguelen Southern Ocean The Antarctic |
geographic_facet |
Antarctic Indian Kerguelen Southern Ocean The Antarctic |
genre |
Antarc* Antarctic Elephant Seal Elephant Seals Southern Elephant Seal Southern Ocean |
genre_facet |
Antarc* Antarctic Elephant Seal Elephant Seals Southern Elephant Seal Southern Ocean |
op_relation |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6908696/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31831763 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-55152-4 |
op_rights |
© The Author(s) 2019 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
op_rightsnorm |
CC-BY |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-55152-4 |
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Scientific Reports |
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9 |
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1 |
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1766189662019256320 |