End-to-end foodweb control of fish production on Georges Bank
Citable URI
https://hdl.handle.net/1912/3685As published
https://doi.org/10.1093/icesjms/fsp180Abstract
The ecosystem approach to management requires the productivity of individual fish
stocks to be considered in the context of the entire ecosystem. In this paper, we derive an
annual end-to-end budget for the Georges Bank ecosystem, based on data from the
GLOBEC program and fisheries surveys for the years 1993-2002. We use this budget as
the basis to construct scenarios that describe the consequences of various alterations in
the Georges Bank trophic web: reduced nutrient input, increased benthic production,
removal of carnivorous plankton such as jellyfish, and changes in species dominance
within fish guilds. We calculate potential yields of cod and haddock for the different
scenarios, and compare the results with historic catches and estimates of maximum
sustainable yield (MSY) from recent stock assessments. The MSYs of cod and haddock
can be met if the fish community is restructured to make them the dominant species in
their respective diet-defined guilds. A return to the balance of fish species present in the
first half of the 20th century would depend on an increase in the fraction of primary
production going to the benthos rather than to plankton. Estimates of energy flux through
the Georges Bank trophic web indicate that rebuilding the principal groundfish species to
their MSY levels requires restructuring of the fish community and repartitioning of energy
within the food web.
Description
Author Posting. © The Author(s), 2009. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Oxford University Press for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in ICES Journal of Marine Science: Journal du Conseil 66 (2009): 2223-2232, doi:10.1093/icesjms/fsp180.
Collections
Suggested Citation
Preprint: Collie, Jeremy S., Gifford, Dian J., Steele, John H., "End-to-end foodweb control of fish production on Georges Bank", 2009-05-06, https://doi.org/10.1093/icesjms/fsp180, https://hdl.handle.net/1912/3685Related items
Showing items related by title, author, creator and subject.
-
Balancing end-to-end budgets of the Georges Bank ecosystem
Steele, John H.; Collie, Jeremy S.; Bisagni, James J.; Gifford, Dian J.; Fogarty, Michael J.; Link, Jason S.; Sullivan, B. K.; Sieracki, Michael E.; Beet, Andrew R.; Mountain, David G.; Durbin, Edward G.; Palka, D.; Stockhausen, W. T. (2007-05-09)Oceanographic regimes on the continental shelf display a great range in the time scales of physical exchange, biochemical processes and trophic transfers. The close surface-to-seabed physical coupling at intermediate scales ... -
Analysis of energy flow in US GLOBEC ecosystems using end-to-end models
Ruzicka, James J.; Steele, John H.; Gaichas, Sarah K.; Ballerini, Tosca; Gifford, Dian J.; Brodeur, Richard D.; Hofmann, Eileen E. (The Oceanography Society, 2013-12)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, ... -
Constructing end-to-end models using ECOPATH data
Steele, John H.; Ruzicka, James J. (2011-03)The wide availability of ECOPATH data sets provides a valuable resource for the comparative analysis of marine ecosystems. We show how to derive a bottom-up transform from the top-down ECOPATH; couple this to a simple NPZD ...