Interannual variability in salmon (Oncorhynchus spp.) production in the northeast Pacific is understood to be driven by oceanographic variability and bottom-up processes affecting prey availability to juvenile salmon. Scyphozoan jellyfish have an important role in shaping the pathways of energy flow through pelagic food webs. While jellyfish obtain high production...
Fishery management production models tend to stress only the elements directly linked to fish (i.e. fish, fish food, and fish predators). Large coastal jellyfish are major consumers of plankton in heavily fished ecosystems; yet, they are frequently not included as model components. We explore the relationship between gulf menhaden (Brevoortia...
A majority of the world’s largest net-based fisheries target planktivorous forage fish that serve as a critical trophic link between the plankton and upper-level consumers such as large predatory fishes, seabirds, and marine mammals. Because the plankton production that drives forage fish also drives jellyfish production, these taxa often overlap...
As in many regions of the world, the shelf waters of the western United States have experienced large increases and high interannual variability in jellyfish populations in recent decades. The northern California Current (NCC) is a productive upwelling zone that is home to large populations of medusae, particularly during some...
End-to-end models were constructed to examine and compare the trophic structure and energy flow in coastal shelf ecosystems of four US Global Ocean Ecosystem Dynamics (GLOBEC) study regions: the Northern California Current, the Central Gulf of Alaska, Georges Bank, and the Southwestern Antarctic Peninsula. High-quality data collected on system components...
Similarly structured food web models of four coastal ecosystems (Northern California Current, Central Gulf of Alaska, Georges Bank, southwestern Antarctic Peninsula) were used to investigate competition among whales, fishes, pinnipeds, and humans. Two analysis strategies simulated the effects of historic baleen and odontocete whale abundances across all trophic levels: food...
The Northern California Current (NCC) is a seasonally productive and open ecosystem. It is home to both a diverse endemic community and to seasonally transient species. Productivity and food web structure vary seasonally, interannually, and decadally due to variability in coastal upwelling, climate-scale physical processes, and the migratory species entering...
Climatic effects in the ocean at the community level are poorly described, yet accurate predictions about ecosystem responses to changing environmental conditions rely on understanding biotic responses in a food-web context to support knowledge about direct biotic responses to the physical environment. Here we conduct time-series analyses with multivariate autoregressive...
Previously published in California Cooperative Oceanic Fisheries Investigations Progress Report, 2007, Vol.48; access courtesy of publisher and authors.
Interannual variability in salmon (Oncorhynchus spp.) production in the northeast Pacific is understood to be driven by oceanographic variability and bottom-up processes affecting prey availability to juvenile salmon. Scyphozoan jellyfish have an important role in shaping the pathways of energy flow through pelagic food webs. While jellyfish obtain high production...