Archive for fish

Why are sand lance embryos so sensitive to future high CO2-oceans?

Posted by mmaheigan 
· Friday, August 26th, 2022 

Two decades of ocean acidification experiments have shown that elevated CO2 can affect many traits in fish early life stages. Only few species, however, show direct CO2-induced survival reductions. This may partly reflect a bias in our current empirical record, which is dominated by species from nearshore tropical-to-temperate environments. There, these organisms already experience highly variable CO2 conditions. In contrast, fishes from more offshore habitats, especially at higher latitudes are adapted to more CO2-stable conditions, which could make them more CO2-sensitive. This group of fishes is still underrepresented in the literature, despite its enormous commercial and ecological importance.

To help address this gap, we conducted new experimental work on northern sand lance Ammodytes dubius, a key forage fish on offshore Northwest Atlantic sand banks with trophic links to more than 70 different predator species of fish, squid, seabirds, and marine mammals. On Stellwagen Bank in the southern Gulf of Maine, sand lance are the ‘backbone’ of the eponymous National Marine Sanctuary.

We followed up on the intriguing findings of a pilot study a few years ago. Over two years and two trials, we again produced embryos from wild, Stellwagen Bank spawners and reared them at several pCO2 levels (~400−2000 μatm) in combination with static and dynamic temperatures. Again, we observed consistently large CO2-induced reductions in hatching success (-23% at 1,000 µatm, -61% at ~2,000 µatm), but this time the effects were temperature-independent.

Intriguingly, we again saw that many sand lance embryos at high CO2 treatments did not merely arrest in their development (indicative of acidosis), but appeared to develop fully to hatch but were somehow incapable of doing so. We show several lines of evidence supporting the hypothesis that CO2 directly impairs hatching in this species. Most fish rely on hatching enzymes that help embryos break the chorion (egg shell), but these ubiquitous enzymes may work less efficiently under high CO2, low pH conditions.

For additional context, we also derived long-term, seasonal pCO2 projections specifically for Stellwagen Bank, which together with the experimental data suggested that increasing CO2 levels alone could reduce sand lance hatching success to 71% of contemporary levels by the year 2100.

We believe that the importance of sand lances as forage fishes across most northern hemisphere shelf ecosystem warrants a strategic effort of OA researchers to begin testing other sand lance species or populations to understand the magnitude of the problem and its underlying mechanisms.

Authors:
Hannes Baumann (University of Connecticut)
Lucas Jones (University of Connecticut)
Christopher Murray (University of Washington)
Samantha Siedlecki (University of Connecticut)
Michael Alexander (NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory)
Emma Cross (Southern Connecticut State University)

Does ocean acidification make marine fish grow differently? What about sex-specific effects?

Posted by mmaheigan 
· Monday, February 8th, 2021 

The question of whether ocean acidification (OA) will impact the growth of marine fish remains surprisingly uncertain. The bulk of available evidence in the form of laboratory experiments suggests that most fish are not impacted by OA-relevant CO2 levels, but many studies suffer from the inherent methodical constraints of rearing marine fish in captivity. For example, most experiments cover a small fraction of a species’ lifespan and do not employ restricted feeding regimes which may enable fish to increase feeding to offset metabolic deficits associated with high-CO2 acclimation.

To address these methodological shortcomings, authors of a recent publication in PLOS One synthesized three years of multiple long-term, food-controlled experiments that reared large populations of the model forage fish Menidia menidia (Atlantic silverside) from fertilization to about a third of their lifespan. Results showed modest but consistent negative, temperature-dependent growth effects, in which silversides from high-CO2 treatments were shorter (-3% to -9%) and weighed less (-6% to -18%) than ambient-CO2 conspecifics. However, sometimes it takes more than just looking at means and standard deviations to elucidate these effects. Hence, the authors employed powerful shift functions to analyze how the size distributions of experimental populations shifted to smaller quantiles under future CO2 conditions.

Figure caption: The length of juvenile Atlantic silversides reared from fertilization under control (blue dots) and high-CO2 treatments (red dots). Exposure to OA conditions imposed a universal shift to a smaller body size across the size frequency distribution. Black vertical bars overlaying each distribution indicate the .1, .25, .5, .75, and .9 quantiles and quantile shifts are indicated by connecting lines.

It took over 100 days of continuous high-CO2 exposure until size differences were detectable. This means that long-term CO2 effects could exist in other tested species but are missed in relatively short experiments. Furthermore, the authors sexed several thousand fish to enable a rare sex-specific analysis of CO2 effects. Both sexes were similarly affected by high CO2, and the hormonal pathways that mediate environmental sex determination in this species are not impacted by CO2 level. Our results confirm that Atlantic silversides are relatively tolerant of future OA conditions. But even in this robust estuarine species, high CO2 can reduce growth. This could have cascading effects on population dynamics by impacting size-dependent traits like reproductive success and over-wintering survival of this widespread and ecologically important prey species.

 

Authors
Christopher S. Murray (University of Washington)
Hannes Baumann (University of Connecticut)

 

Climate-driven pelagification of marine food webs: Implications for marine fish populations

Posted by mmaheigan 
· Friday, January 22nd, 2021 

Global warming changes the conditions for all ocean life, with wide-ranging consequences. It is particularly difficult to predict the impact of climate change on fish because fish production is conditioned on both temperature and food resource (zooplankton and benthic organisms) changes. Climate change projections from Earth system models show a negative amplification of changes in global ocean net primary production (NPP), with an approximate doubling of production decreases from net primary producers to mesozooplankton. This “trophic amplification” continues up the marine food web to fishes. A new study published in Frontiers in Marine Science illustrates this amplification clearly when fishes are defined by their maximum body size, which describes their position in the food web (Figure 1a). However, decreases in globally integrated biomass and production were not limited to differences in size alone. Importantly, reduced abundances also varied by fish functional type (Figure 1b).

Figure 1: a) Percent change in net primary production (NPP), mesozooplankton (MesoZ) production, all medium (M) fishes, and all large (L) fishes from Historic (1951-2000) to the RCP 8.5 Projection (2051-2100). b) Percent change in production of forage fish, large pelagic fish, demersal fish, and benthic invertebrates in Projection (2051-2100) from Historic (1951-2000). c) Absolute change in the ratio of zooplankton production to seafloor detrital flux as the difference of the Projection (2051-2100) from the Historic (1951-2000). d) Percent change in zooplankton production (dashed grey), percent change in seafloor detrital flux (solid grey), and absolute change in the ratio of their means during the Historic and Projection time periods relative to 1951.

Despite the “pelagification” of marine food webs caused by unequal decreases in secondary production (Figure 1d) and subsequent increases in pelagic zooplankton production relative to seafloor detritus production (Figure 1c,d), large pelagic fish (e.g., tunas and billfishes) suffered the greatest declines and the highest degree of projection uncertainty. The result was a shift from benthic-based ecosystems historically dominated by large demersal fish (e.g., cods and flounders) towards pelagic-based ones dominated by smaller forage fish (e.g., sardines and herring). Any positive impacts of the pelagification of food resources on large pelagic fish were overwhelmed by the negative impacts of the overall reduction in global productivity, compounded by warming-induced increases in metabolic demands. Both the degree of change in the productivity of large pelagic fish and the magnitude of trophic amplification were sensitive to the temperature dependence of metabolic rates. Thus, better constraints are needed on empirical estimates of the effect of temperature on physiological rates to project the impacts of climate change on fish biomass and marine ecosystem structure.

Ocean fish harvests currently supply ~15% of global protein demand. Reduced primary production will decrease the total amount of fish available to harvest for human food, while the pelagification of ecosystems could require large and expensive structural modifications to fisheries, including gear, location, regional and international management plans, consumer demands, and market values.

 

Authors:
Colleen M. Petrik (Texas A&M University)
Charles A. Stock (Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory)
Ken H. Andersen (Technical University of Denmark)
P. Daniël van Denderen (International Council for the Exploration of the Seas)
James R. Watson (Oregon State University)

Tiny phytoplankton seen from space

Posted by mmaheigan 
· Thursday, November 19th, 2020 

Picophytoplankton, the smallest phytoplankton on Earth, are dominant in over half of the global surface ocean, growing in low-nutrient “ocean deserts” where diatoms and other large phytoplankton have difficult to thrive. Despite their small size, picophytoplankton collectively account for well over 50% of primary production in oligotrophic waters, thus playing a major role in sustaining marine food webs.

In a recent paper published in Optics Express, the authors use satellite-detected ocean color (namely remote-sensing reflectance, Rrs(λ)) and sea surface temperature to estimate the abundance of the three picophytoplankton groups—the cyanobacteria Prochlorococcus and Synechococcus, and autotrophic picoeukaryotes. The authors analysed Rrs(λ) spectra using principal component analysis, and principal component scores and SST were used in the predictive models. Then, they trained and independently evaluated the models with in-situ data from the Atlantic Ocean (Atlantic Meridional Transect cruises). This approach allows for the satellite detection of the succession of species across ocean oligotrophic ecosystem boundaries, where these cells are most abundant (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Cell abundances of the three major picophytoplankton groups (the cyanobacteria Prochlorococcus and Synechococcus, and a collective group of autotrophic picoeukaryotes) in surface waters of the Atlantic Ocean. Abundances are shown for the dominant group in terms of total biovolume (converted from cell abundance).

Since these organisms can be used as proxies for marine ecosystem boundaries, this method can be used in studies of climate and ecosystem change, as it allows a synoptic observation of changes in picophytoplankton distributions over time and space. For exploring spectral features in hyperspectral Rrs(λ) data, the implementation of this model using data from future hyperspectral satellite instruments such as NASA PACE’s Ocean Color Instrument (OCI) will extend our knowledge about the distribution of these ecologically relevant phytoplankton taxa. These observations are crucial for broad comprehension of the effects of climate change in the expansion or shifts in ocean ecosystems.

 

Authors:
Priscila K. Lange (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center / Universities Space Research Association / Blue Marble Space Institute of Science)
Jeremy Werdell (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center)
Zachary K. Erickson (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center)
Giorgio Dall’Olmo (Plymouth Marine Laboratory)
Robert J. W. Brewin (University of Exeter)
Mikhail V. Zubkov (Scottish Association for Marine Science)
Glen A. Tarran (Plymouth Marine Laboratory)
Heather A. Bouman (University of Oxford)
Wayne H. Slade (Sequoia Scientific, Inc)
Susanne E. Craig (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center / Universities Space Research Association)
Nicole J. Poulton (Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences)
Astrid Bracher (Alfred-Wegener-Institute Helmholtz Center for Polar and Marine Research / University of Bremen)
Michael W. Lomas (Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences)
Ivona Cetinić (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center / Universities Space Research Association)

 

You better repeat it: Serial ocean acidification experiments on fish early life stages

Posted by mmaheigan 
· Tuesday, March 5th, 2019 

To detect potential effects of acidification on marine organisms, experimenters most commonly use within-experiment replication, but repeating the experiments themselves is rarely done. While the first approach suffices to detect major CO2 effects, other potentially important responses may get detected and robustly quantified only via serial experimentation. A study by Baumann et al. in Biology Letters comprises a meta-analysis of 20 standard CO2 exposure experiments conducted over six years on Atlantic silverside (Menidia menidia) offspring.

Figure 1: Robust estimate of silverside CO2 sensitivity based on serial experimentation. (A, B) Mean CO2 effect size calculated as the log-transformed response ratio of six early life history traits measured at 20 standard experiments between 2012-2017 (Error: bootstrapped 95% confidence intervals). (C) Seasonal change in CO2 sensitivity in silverside early life stages. Each symbol represents an individual experiment, using offspring obtained by fertilizing wild spawners throughout their spring/summer spawning season.

Silversides are an abundant and ecologically important forage fish in the North Atlantic. The study revealed that during early life stages, Atlantic silversides tolerate pCO2 levels up to ~2,000 µatm, with seasonal shifts in sensitivity. However, this early exposure to high pCO2 levels reduces embryo survival by 9% and overall survival by 13% (Figure 1). Future ocean acidification could cause reduced survival of these and other forage fish, and thus impact their diverse marine predators, including seabirds and commercially important fish species. This sustained experimental work resulted in the most robustly constrained estimates of average CO2 effect sizes for a marine organism to date, demonstrating the utility of serial experimentation as a powerful tool for assessing organism responses to changing CO2.

 

Authors:
Hannes Baumann
Emma L. Cross
Chris S. Murray
(all University of Connecticut)

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