Ivo Grigorov

A Dark Hole in Our Understanding of Marine Ecosystems and Their Services: Perspectives from the Mesopelagic Community

In the face of increasing anthropogenic pressures acting on the Earth system, urgent actions are needed to guarantee efficient resource management and sustainable development for our growing human population. Our oceans - the largest underexplored component of the Earth system - are potentially home for a large number of new resources, which can directly impact upon food security and the wellbeing of humanity. However, the extraction of these resources has repercussions for biodiversity and the oceans ability to sequester green house gases and thereby climate. In the search for “new resources” to unlock the economic potential of the global oceans, recent observations have identified a large unexploited biomass of mesopelagic fish living in the deep ocean. This biomass has recently been estimated to be 10 billion metric tonnes, 10 times larger than previous estimates however the real biomass is still in question. If we are able to exploit this community at sustainable levels without impacting upon biodiversity and compromising the oceans’ ability to sequester carbon, we can produce more food and potentially many new nutraceutical products. However, to meet the needs of present generations without compromising the needs of future generations, we need to guarantee a sustainable exploitation of these resources. To do so requires a holistic assessment of the community and an understanding of the mechanisms controlling this biomass, its role in the preservation of biodiversity and its influence on climate as well as management tools able to weigh the costs and benefits of exploitation of this community.

Introduction to the BASIN Special Issue: State of art, past present a view to the future

The starting point for EURO-BASIN were discussions at the EurOcean conference in Hamburg (Germany) in 2000 focusing on perspectives for European and North American research cooperation in the North Atlantic. This conference resulted in a memorandum of understanding signed between the USA National Science Foundation (NSF) and the European Commission (EC), agreeing to support collaborative research in the North Atlantic. However, it was not until 2005 when funds from the USA NSF and the European network of excellence EURO-OCEANS allowed for European, USA and Canadian scientists to meet in Reykjavik, Iceland (Wiebe et al., 2009), to start the process leading to the development of an International North Atlantic Basin scale Science Plan. Subsequently, support for the BASIN community to hold three meetings in 2007–2008 was obtained from the US NSF and a EU 6th Framework Specific Support Action (SSA) BASIN. These meetings, which built upon the issues identified in Reykjavik, were held in Hamburg (Germany), Chapel Hill (USA), and Amsterdam (the Netherlands). The outcome of these meetings was the International BASIN Science Plan, published as a GLOBEC report (Wiebe et al., 2009). Alas, while the science needs were collectively agreed upon, the difficulty of funding coordinating research (both in time and in concept) from both sides of the Atlantic was not easily resolved. Moving ahead, the European Commission issued a call for proposals, which targeted some of the issues outlined in the International BASIN Science Plan. Specifically, the call was focused scientifically “on the need to improve the understanding of the variability, potential impacts, and feedbacks of global change and anthropogenic forcing on the structure, function and dynamics of the ecosystems of the North Atlantic Ocean and associated shelf seas and on their capacity to provide services”. The successful project needed to provide new data, analyses and the models necessary to: (1) Understand and simulate the population structure and dynamics of broadly distributed, and biogeochemically and trophically important plankton and fish species, to resolve the impacts of climate variability on marine ecosystems and the feedbacks to the earth system. (2) Develop understanding and strategies that would contribute to improving and advancing ocean management (ecosystem approach). In response to this call, the successful EURO-BASIN consortium was formed (European Basin Scale Analysis and Synthesis), using as its starting point the BASIN International Science plan. While a similar funding mechanism was not forthcoming from the North American side, North American scientists were able to take advantage of opportunities to participate in EURO-BASIN cruise programs, meetings and to publish joint articles (e.g., this Special Issue).