Ecological characteristics of Walleye pollock eggs and larvae in the southeastern Bering Sea during the late 1970s

Walleye pollock (Theragra chalcogramma) is an ecologically and economically important groundfish in the eastern Bering Sea. Its population size fluctuates widely, driving and being driven by changes in other components of the ecosystem. It is becoming apparent that dramatic shifts in climate occur on a decadal scale, and these “regime shifts” strongly affect the biota. This paper examines quantitative collections of planktonic eggs and larvae of pollock from the southeastern Bering Sea during 1976–1979. Mortality, advection, and growth rates were estimated, and compared among the years encompassing the 1970s’ regime shift. These data indicate that pollock spawning starts in late February over the basin north of Bogoslof Island. Over the shelf, most spawning occurs north of Unimak Island near the 100 m isobath in early or mid April. Pollock eggs are advected to the northwest from the main spawning area at 5–10 cm/sec. Larvae are found over the basin north of Bogoslof Island in April, and over the shelf between Unimak Island and the Priblof Islands in May. Compared to 1977, the spawning period appeared to be later in 1976 (a cold year) and earlier in 1978 (a warm year) in the study area. At the lower temperatures in 1976, egg duration would be longer and thus egg mortality would operate over a longer period than in the other years. Mean larval growth appeared to be lower in 1976 than in 1977 and 1979. Estimated egg mortality rate in 1977 was 0.6 in April and 0.3 in early May.     

Spatial and Temporal Variations of Sound Speed at the PN Section

Gridded sound speed data were calculated using Del Grosso's formulation from the temperature and salinity data at the PN section in the East China Sea covering 92 cruises between February 1978 and October 2000. The vertical gradients of sound speed are mainly related to the seasonal variations, and the strong horizontal gradients are mainly related to the Kuroshio and the upwelling. The standard deviations show that great variations of sound speed exist in the upper layer and in the slope zone. Empirical orthogonal function analysis shows that contributions of surface heating and the Kuroshio to sound speed variance are almost equivalent. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Atmospheric forcing of fine-sand transport on a low-energy inner shelf: south-central Louisiana,USA

Hydrodynamic and sediment transport measurements from instrumentation deployed during a 54-day winter period at two sites on the Louisiana inner shelf are presented. Strong extratropical storms, with wind speeds of 7.8 to 15.1 m s^-1, were the dominant forcing mechanism during the study. These typically caused mean oscillatory flows and shear velocities about 33% higher than fair weather (averaging 12.3 and 3.2 cm s^-1 at the landward site, and 11.4 and 2.7 cm s^-1 at the seaward site, respectively). These responses were coupled with mean near-bottom currents more than twice as strong as during fair weather (10.3 and 7.5 cm s^-1 at the landward and seaward sites, respectively). These flowed in approximately the same direction as the veering wind, causing a net offshore transport of fine sand. Weak storms were responsible for little sediment transport whereas during fair weather, onshore sand transport of approximately 25-75% of the storm values appears to have occurred. This contradicts previous predictions of negligible fair-weather sediment movement on this inner shelf.     

Remote estimation of surficial seafloor properties through the application Angular Range Analysis to multibeam sonar data

The variation of the backscatter strength with the angle of incidence is an intrinsic property of the seafloor, which can be used in methods for acoustic seafloor characterization. Although multibeam sonars acquire backscatter over a wide range of incidence angles, the angular information is normally neglected during standard backscatter processing and mosaicking. An approach called Angular Range Analysis has been developed to preserve the backscatter angular information, and use it for remote estimation of seafloor properties. Angular Range Analysis starts with the beam-by-beam time-series of acoustic backscatter provided by the multibeam sonar and then corrects the backscatter for seafloor slope, beam pattern, time varying and angle varying gains, and area of insonification. Subsequently a series of parameters are calculated from the stacking of consecutive time series over a spatial scale that approximates half of the swath width. Based on these calculated parameters and the inversion of an acoustic backscatter model, we estimate the acoustic impedance and the roughness of the insonified area on the seafloor. In the process of this inversion, the behavior of the model parameters is constrained by established inter-property relationships. The approach has been tested using a 300 kHz Simrad EM3000 multibeam sonar in Little Bay, NH. Impedance estimates are compared to in situ measurements of sound speed. The comparison shows a very good correlation, indicating the potential of this approach for robust seafloor characterization.     

Phytoplankton biomass and size fractions in surface waters of the Australian sector of the southern ocean

We collected surface water along the 142nd E meridian from Tasmania to Antarctica in December 1999. We measured temperature, salinity and total chlorophyll a; additionally, we collected suspended particle size fractions and used fluorometric analysis to determine the quantity of chlorophyll a in each of four cell size classes: picoplankton (<3 μm), two nanoplankton fractions (3–10 μm and 10–20 μm) and microplankton (> 20 μm). Changes in temperature and salinity show that we crossed 6 water masses separated by 5 fronts. We found low abundance (<0.2 mg m⁻³) of chlorophyll in all size classes, with the exception of higher values near the continent (0.2 to 0.4 mg m⁻³). Lowest chlorophyll values (<0.1 mg m⁻³) were found in the Polar Frontal Zone (51° to 54°S). Microplankton made up the largest portion of total chlorophyll throughout most of the region. We conclude that biomass of all phytoplankton fractions, especially pico-and nanoplankton, was constrained by limiting factors, most probably iron, throughout the region and that ecosystem dynamics within a zone are not circumpolar but are regionalized within sectors.     

Effects of an Artificial Breakwater on the Distributions of Planktonic Microbial Communities

The summer distributions of planktonic microbial communities (heterotrophic and phtosynthetic bacteria, phtosynthetic and heterotrophic nanoflagellates, ciliate plankton, and microphytoplankton) were compared between inner and outer areas of Lake Sihwa, divided by an artificial breakwater, located on the western coast of Korea, in September 2003. The semienclosed, inner area was characterized by hyposaline surface water (<17 psu), and by low concentrations of dissolved oxygen (avg. 0.4 mg L¹) and high concentrations of inorganic nutrients (nitrogenous nutrients >36 μM, phosphate <4 μM) in the bottom layer. Higher densities of heterotrophic bacteria and nanoflagellates also occurred in the inner area than did in the outer area, while microphytoplankton (mainly diatoms) occurred abundantly in the outer area. A tiny tintinnid ciliate, Tintinnopsis nana, bloomed into more than 10⁶ cells L¹ at the surface layer of the inner area, while its abundance was much lower (10³-10⁴ cells L¹) in the outer area of the breakwater. Ciliate abundance was highly correlated with heterotrophic bacteria (r = 0.886, p < 0.001) and heterotrophic flagellates (r = 0.962, p < 0.001), indicating that rich food availability may have led to theT. nana bloom. These results suggest that the breakwater causes the eutrophic environment in artificial lakes with limited flushing of enriched water and develops into abundant bacteria, nanoflagellates, and ciliates.     

Northward transport of pacific summer water along the Northwind Ridge in the Western Arctic Ocean

The recent sea-ice reduction in the Arctic Ocean is not spatially uniform, but is disproportionally large around the Northwind Ridge and Chukchi Plateau compared to elsewhere in the Canada Basin. In the Northwind Ridge region, Pacific Summer Water (PSW) delivered from the Bering Sea occupies the subsurface layer. The spatial distribution of warm PSW shows a quite similar pattern to the recent ice retreat, suggesting the influence of PSW on the sea-ice reduction. To understand the regionality of the recent ice retreat, we examine the dynamics and timing of the delivery of the PSW into this region. Here, we adopt a two-layer linearized potential vorticity equation to investigate the behavior of Rossby waves in the presence of a topographic discontinuity in the high latitude ocean. The analytical results show a quite different structure from those of mid-latitude basins due to the small value of β. Incident barotropic waves excited by the sea-ice motion with large annual variation can be scattered into both barotropic and baroclinic modes at the discontinuity. Since the scattered baroclinic Rossby wave with annual frequency cannot propagate freely, a strong baroclinic current near the topographic discontinuity is established. The seasonal variation of current near the topographic discontinuity would cause a kind of selective switching system for shelf water transport into the basin. In our simple analytical model, the enhanced northward transport of summer water and reduced northward transport of winter water are well demonstrated. The present study indicates that these basic dynamics imply that a strengthening of the surface forcing during winter in the Canada Basin could cause sea-ice reduction in the Western Arctic through the changes of underlying Pacific Summer Water.     

Change of multifractal thermal characteristics in the western Philippine sea upper layer during internal wave-soliton propagation

The upper layer (above 140 m depth) temperature in the western Philippine Sea near Taiwan was sampled using a coastal monitoring buoy (CMB) with 15 attached thermistors during July 28–August 7, 2005. The data were collected every 10 min at 1, 3, 5, 10, 15, and 20 m using the CMB sensors, and every 15 sec at 15 different depths between 25 m and 140 m. Internal waves and solitons were identified from the time-depth plot of the temperature field. Without the internal waves and solitons, the power spectra, structure functions, and singular measures (representing the intermittency) of temperature field satisfy the power law with multi-scale characteristics at all depths. The internal waves do not change the basic characteristics of the multifractal structure. However, the internal solitons change the power exponent of the power spectra drastically, especially in the low wave number domain; they also break down the power law of the structure function and increase the intermittency parameter. The physical mechanisms causing these different effects need to be explored further.     

Further evidence for non-reemergence of winter SST anomalies in the North Pacific eastern subtropical mode water area

Following our previous study (Sugimoto and Hanawa, 2005b), we further investigate the reason why reemergence of winter sea surface temperature anomalies does not occur in the North Pacific eastern subtropical mode water (NPESTMW) area, despite its occurrence in the North Pacific subtropical mode water and North Pacific central mode water areas. We use vertical temperature and salinity profiles of the World Ocean Circulation Experiment Hydrographic Program and Argo floats with high vertical and temporal resolution, together with heat flux data through the sea surface. We point out first that one of the causes for non-occurrence of reemergence is that the thickness of NPESTMW is very thin. In addition to this basic cause, two major reasons are found: a vigorous mixing in the lower portion of NPESTMW and less heat input from the atmosphere in the warming season. Since, in the lower portion of NPESTMW and deeper, the stratification is favorable for salt-finger type convection to occur compared with the other mode water areas, vigorous mixing takes place. This is confirmed by both a large Turner Angle there and the existence of staircase structures in vertical temperature and salinity profiles. From the viewpoint of heat input, the NPESTMW area gradually gains heat in the warming season compared with other mode water areas. As a result, NPESTMW cannot be capped so quickly by the shallow summer mixed layer, and water properties of NPESTMW are to be gradually modified, even in the upper portion.