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| Title | Oceanographic Conditions Structure Forage Fishes into Lipid-Rich and Lipid-Poor Communities in Lower Cook Inlet, Alaska, USA |
| Author | Alisa A. Abookire, John F. Piatt |
| Date | Feb-18-2005 |
| Description | Forage fish populations1 in the Gulf of Alaska fluctuate in abundance over a range of temporal and spatial scales (Bechtol 1997, Anderson & Piatt 1999, Mueter & Norcross 2000). After a climatic regime shift occurred in the North Pacific during the late 1970s (Francis et al. 1998, Hare & Mantua 2000), gadid and flatfish populations increased dramatically while shrimp and capelin Mallotus villosus populations virtually disappeared (Anderson et al. 1997, Anderson & Piatt 1999, Mueter & Norcross 2000). This trophic reorganization is hypothesized to be an important contributor to declines in populations of seabirds (Piatt & Anderson 1996) and marine mammals (Merrick et al. 1987), because lipidpoor gadids and flatfishes generally replaced lipid-rich fish species in the Gulf of Alaska food web. On a smaller temporal scale, El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events in the northern Gulf of Alaska may be associated with changes in the distribution and recruitment of pelagic juvenile stages of Pacific herring Clupea pallasi (hereafter referred to as herring) and groundfishes (Mysak 1986, Bailey et al. 1995, Piatt et al. 1999). Understanding the response of fish populations to changes in physical oceanography is an important step toward understanding the effects of climatic shifts on marine piscivores (McGowan et al. 1998, Kitaysky & Golubova 2000, Stenseth et al. 2002, Chavez et al. 2003). |
| Doc Link | http://www.absc.usgs.gov/research/seabird_foragefish/products/publications/Abookire_2005_MEPS2005.pdf |
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