Surface and subsurface oceanographic features drive forage fish distributions and aggregations: Implications for prey availability to top predators in the US Northeast Shelf ecosystem.

ABSTRACT: Forage fishes are a critical food web link in marine ecosystems, aggregating in a hierarchical patch structure over multiple spatial and temporal scales. Surface-level forage fish aggregations (FFAs) represent a concentrated source of prey available to surface- and shallow-foraging marine predators. Existing survey and analysis methods are often imperfect for studying forage fishes at scales appropriate to foraging predators, making it difficult to quantify predator-prey interactions. In many cases, general distributions of forage fish species are known; however, these may not represent surface-level prey availability to predators. Likewise, we lack an understanding of the oceanographic drivers of spatial patterns of prey aggregation and availability or forage fish community patterns. Spec

SUBMITTER: Goetsch C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10334121 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature