Marcos Llope

Spawning stock and recruitment in North Sea cod shaped by food and climate

In order to provide better fisheries management and conservation decisions, there is a need to discern the underlying relationship between the spawning stock and recruitment of marine fishes, a relationship which is influenced by the environmental conditions. Here, we demonstrate how the environmental conditions (temperature and the food availability for fish larvae) influence the stock–recruitment relationship and indeed what kind of stock–recruitment relationship we might see under different environmental conditions. Using unique zooplankton data from the Continuous Plankton Recorder, we find that food availability (i.e. zooplankton) in essence determines which model applies for the once large North Sea cod (Gadus morhua) stock. Further, we show that recruitment is strengthened during cold years and weakened during warm years. Our combined model explained 45 per cent of the total variance in cod recruitment, while the traditional Ricker and Beverton–Holt models only explained about 10 per cent. Specifically, our approach predicts that a full recovery of the North Sea cod stock might not be expected until the environment becomes more favourable.

Predator transitory spillover induces trophic cascades in ecological sinks

Understanding the effects of cross-system fluxes is fundamental in ecosystem ecology and biological conservation. Source-sink dynamics and spillover processes may link adjacent ecosystems by movement of organisms across system boundaries. However, effects of temporal variability in these cross-system fluxes on a whole marine ecosystem structure have not yet been presented. Here we show, using 35 y of multitrophic data series from the Baltic Sea, that transitory spillover of the top-predator cod from its main distribution area produces cascading effects in the whole food web of an adjacent and semi-isolated ecosystem. At varying population size, cod expand/contract their distribution range and invade/retreat from the neighboring Gulf of Riga, thereby affecting the local prey population of herring and, indirectly, zooplankton and phytoplankton via top-down control. The Gulf of Riga can be considered for cod a “true sink” habitat, where in the absence of immigration from the source areas of the central Baltic Sea the cod population goes extinct due to the absence of suitable spawning grounds. Our results add a metaecosystem perspective to the ongoing intense scientific debate on the key role of top predators in structuring natural systems. The integration of regional and local processes is central to predict species and ecosystem responses to future climate changes and ongoing anthropogenic disturbances.

Seasonal plankton dynamics along a cross-shelf gradient.

Much interest has recently been devoted to reconstructing the dynamic structure of ecological systems on the basis of time-series data. Using 10 years of monthly data on phyto- and zooplankton abundance from the Bay of Biscay (coastal to shelf-break sites), we demonstrate that the interaction between these two plankton components is approximately linear, whereas the effects of environmental factors (nutrients, temperature, upwelling and photoperiod) on these two plankton population growth rates are nonlinear. With the inclusion of the environmental factors, the main observed seasonal and inter-annual dynamic patterns within the studied plankton assemblage also indicate the prevalence of bottom-up regulatory control.

Nutrients dynamics in the southern Bay of Biscay (1993–2003): Winter supply, stoichiometry, long‐term trends, and their effects on the phytoplankton community

[1] The southern Bay of Biscay is a very active region in terms of hydrography due to the interannual variations of its Central Waters, the recurrence of mesoscale features such as slope currents and upwellings, and the freshwater discharges from land. This highly dynamic physical environment influences to a great extent the biogeochemical cycles of nutrients beyond the seasonal cycle typical of middle latitudes. By using a monthly time series (1993–2003) of nitrate, nitrite, phosphate, and silicate consisting of three stations placed along a cross-shelf transect, we assess the role of the physical forcing on nutrient seasonal and interannual dynamics within the upper 200 m, as well as the interactions with the biological component. The seasonal cycles of all nutrients and the stoichiometric balances (N:P and Si:N) are characterized along this coastal-oceanic gradient. The year-to-year variations in the extent of the winter replenishment are analyzed in relation to the background Central Waters and presence/absence of the Iberian Poleward Current. In the long term we report decreasing linear trends of nitrate, nitrite, and silicate as well as an uncoupled nonlinear variation (i.e., cyclical) for all nutrients. Furthermore, we investigate the effect of this complex long-term forcing on the phytoplankton: the linear trends are probably related to a decreasing primary production rate, while the nonlinear forcing may be responsible for controlling the community structure of phytoplankton.

Climate and fishing steer ecosystem regeneration to uncertain economic futures

Overfishing of large predatory fish populations has resulted in lasting restructurings of entire marine food webs worldwide, with serious socio-economic consequences. Fortunately, some degraded ecosystems show signs of recovery. A key challenge for ecosystem management is to anticipate the degree to which recovery is possible. By applying a statistical food-web model, using the Baltic Sea as a case study, we show that under current temperature and salinity conditions, complete recovery of this heavily altered ecosystem will be impossible. Instead, the ecosystem regenerates towards a new ecological baseline. This new baseline is characterized by lower and more variable biomass of cod, the commercially most important fish stock in the Baltic Sea, even under very low exploitation pressure. Furthermore, a socio-economic assessment shows that this signal is amplified at the level of societal costs, owing to increased uncertainty in biomass and reduced consumer surplus. Specifically, the combined economic losses amount to approximately 120 million € per year, which equals half of todays maximum economic yield for the Baltic cod fishery. Our analyses suggest that shifts in ecological and economic baselines can lead to higher economic uncertainty and costs for exploited ecosystems, in particular, under climate change.

Interaction between top-down and bottom-up control in marine food webs

Significance Whether environmental conditions, harvesting, or predation pressure primarily regulate an ecosystem is still a question of much debate in marine ecology. Using a wealth of historical records, we describe how climate and fishing interact in a complex marine ecosystem. Through an integrative evidence-based approach, we demonstrate that indirect effects are key to understanding the system. Planktivorous forage fish provide an important role in the system, linking bottom-up and top-down processes such that fishing can indirectly impact the plankton and environmental effects can cascade up to impact demersal fish and predatory seabirds. Cascading trophic interactions can be mediated by opposing bottom-up and top-down forces; this combination has the potential to avert regime wide shifts in community structure and functioning. Climate change and resource exploitation have been shown to modify the importance of bottom-up and top-down forces in ecosystems. However, the resulting pattern of trophic control in complex food webs is an emergent property of the system and thus unintuitive. We develop a statistical nondeterministic model, capable of modeling complex patterns of trophic control for the heavily impacted North Sea ecosystem. The model is driven solely by fishing mortality and climatic variables and based on time-series data covering >40 y for six plankton and eight fish groups along with one bird group (>20 y). Simulations show the outstanding importance of top-down exploitation pressure for the dynamics of fish populations. Whereas fishing effects on predators indirectly altered plankton abundance, bottom-up climatic processes dominate plankton dynamics. Importantly, we show planktivorous fish to have a central role in the North Sea food web initiating complex cascading effects across and between trophic levels. Our linked model integrates bottom-up and top-down effects and is able to simulate complex long-term changes in ecosystem components under a combination of stressor scenarios. Our results suggest that in marine ecosystems, pathways for bottom-up and top-down forces are not necessarily mutually exclusive and together can lead to the emergence of complex patterns of control.

Spatio-temporal variability of the North Sea cod recruitment in relation to temperature and zooplankton.

The North Sea cod (Gadus morhua, L.) stock has continuously declined over the past four decades linked with overfishing and climate change. Changes in stock structure due to overfishing have made the stock largely dependent on its recruitment success, which greatly relies on environmental conditions. Here we focus on the spatio-temporal variability of cod recruitment in an effort to detect changes during the critical early life stages. Using International Bottom Trawl Survey (IBTS) data from 1974 to 2011, a major spatio-temporal change in the distribution of cod recruits was identified in the late 1990s, characterized by a pronounced decrease in the central and southeastern North Sea stock. Other minor spatial changes were also recorded in the mid-1980s and early 1990s. We tested whether the observed changes in recruits distribution could be related with direct (i.e. temperature) and/or indirect (i.e. changes in the quantity and quality of zooplankton prey) effects of climate variability. The analyses were based on spatially-resolved time series, i.e. sea surface temperature (SST) from the Hadley Center and zooplankton records from the Continuous Plankton Recorder Survey. We showed that spring SST increase was the main driver for the most recent decrease in cod recruitment. The late 1990s were also characterized by relatively low total zooplankton biomass, particularly of energy-rich zooplankton such as the copepod Calanus finmarchicus, which have further contributed to the decline of North Sea cod recruitment. Long-term spatially-resolved observations were used to produce regional distribution models that could further be used to predict the abundance of North Sea cod recruits based on temperature and zooplankton food availability.

Marine litter disrupts ecological processes in reef systems

Marine litter (ML) contaminates essentially all global coastal and marine environments and drives multiple ecosystem-level effects. Although deleterious effects of ML on several organisms have been investigated in the last years, this information tends to be dispersed or underreported, even in marine biodiversity hotspots such as reef ecosystems. Two are the main goals of this paper: (i) to integrate and synthesize current knowledge on the interactions of ML and reef organisms, and (ii) to evaluate the multiple disruptions on the ecological processes in reef systems. We report here ML-driven ecological disruptions on 418 species across eight reef taxa, including interactions that were previously not addressed in detail, and evaluate their major conservation implications. These results can help raise awareness of global impacts on the worlds reefs by highlighting ML associations in different reef systems around the world, and can aid in ML input reduction and marine management.

Contrasting correlation patterns between environmental factors and chlorophyll levels in the global ocean

In this study we analyze large-scale satellite-derived data using generalized additive models to characterize the global correlation patterns between environmental forcing and marine phytoplankton biomass. We found systematic differences in the relationships between key environmental drivers (temperature, light, and wind) and ocean chlorophyll in the subtropical/tropical and temperate oceans. For the subtropical/tropical and equatorial oceans, the chlorophyll generally declined with increasing temperature and light, while in temperate oceans, chlorophyll was best explained by bell-shaped or positive functions of temperature and light. The relationship between chlorophyll and wind speed is generally positive in low-latitude oceans and bell shaped in temperate oceans. Our analyses also demonstrated strong and geographically consistent positive autoregressive effects of chlorophyll from 1 month to the next and negative autoregressive effects for measurements 2 months apart. These findings imply possibly different regional phytoplankton responses to environmental forcing, suggesting that future environmental change could affect the tropical and temperate upper ocean chlorophyll levels differently.

The ecosystem approach in the Gulf of Cadiz. A perspective from the southernmost European Atlantic regional sea

&NA; This article considers the major events in recent history, current situation and prospects for developing an ecosystem‐based style of management in the Gulf of Cadiz. This particular socio‐ecosystem is characterised by a clear focal ecosystem component—the role of the estuary of the Guadalquivir River as a nursery area—that has an influence on the marine ecosystem and at the same time concentrates a number of sectoral human activities. This nursery role particularly concerns the anchovy fishery, which is the most economically and culturally important fishery in the region. As a transition zone between river and marine environments, estuaries are particularly sensitive to human activities, either directly developed within the aquatic environment and its surroundings or further upstream within its catchment area. The particularities of the Guadalquivir socio‐ecosystem, with an area of influence that extends as far as the city of Seville, require the consideration of multiple sectors and the corresponding conflicting interests. These include the shipping and tourism sectors, the agriculture, aquaculture, salt and mining industries, and the fisheries and conservation interests. This article aims to give an overview of the high‐level policy goals and the jurisdictional framework, scope the sectors involved and describe the pressures and risks of their activities. It will identify conflicting interests relating to different visions of the ecosystem as well as the institutional arrangements that could be used to balance them and finally, put forward a vision for using ecosystem‐based information to improve multi‐sectoral management decisions.