{"id":58689,"date":"2014-02-24T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-02-24T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news-draft\/uncategorized\/uri-oceanographer-as-climate-changes-alaska-fisheries-may-depend-on-winter-survival-of-plankton\/"},"modified":"2014-02-24T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2014-02-24T00:00:00","slug":"uri-oceanographer-as-climate-changes-alaska-fisheries-may-depend-on-winter-survival-of-plankton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/2014\/02\/uri-oceanographer-as-climate-changes-alaska-fisheries-may-depend-on-winter-survival-of-plankton\/","title":{"rendered":"溏心vlog免费B站 oceanographer: As climate changes, Alaska fisheries may depend on winter survival of plankton"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\tNARRAGANSETT, R.I. \u2013 February 24, 2014 \u2013 The health of the Bering Sea fisheries off the coast of Alaska depend largely on the plankton blooms that occur as the sea ice retreats in spring. Sunlight causes phytoplankton to bloom, which provides food to copepods and other zooplankton that are fed upon by fish, crabs and other commercial species.<\/p>\n


\n\tBut new research by a large team of scientists suggests that, as the climate warms, the productivity of the fisheries will be increasingly dependent on the survival rate of plankton through the winter months. And warming temperatures may make it difficult for them to survive the season.<\/p>\n


\nResults of the research will be presented this week in Honolulu at the biennial Ocean Sciences Meeting, sponsored by the American Geophysical Union, The Oceanographic Society, and the Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography.<\/p>\n


\n\t溏心vlog免费B站 oceanographer Robert Campbell, a member of the Bering Sea Project funded by the North Pacific Research Board and the National Science Foundation, said that changes in the timing of the melting of sea ice in spring was expected to have far-reaching effects on the health of the ecosystem, but the importance of winter plankton survival was unexpected.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cIt turns out that when we change the spring ice conditions in our models, we don\u2019t see as large an effect on the system\u2019s productivity as we expected,\u201d said Campbell, a marine scientist at the 溏心vlog免费B站 Graduate School of Oceanography. \u201cBut overwintering survival changes the productivity of the system. That\u2019s very important, and we still don\u2019t really understand what happens.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\tAccording to Campbell, there is little food available for plankton to eat during the winter months, so they enter a state of dormancy called diapause, when their metabolism slows allowing them to go extended periods without eating. But if water temperatures increase, the plankton may emerge from diapause early, increasing their metabolism and burning through their stored fats before food becomes available.<\/p>\n


\n\tThese findings come from computer models created to study the western Arctic ecosystem, but few direct studies of the ecosystem in winter have been conducted due to the challenging environmental conditions. So Campbell said a great deal is still to be learned about winter plankton survival.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cMaybe they will be able to adapt; maybe they don\u2019t raise their metabolism so high. We just don\u2019t know,\u201d Campbell said.<\/p>\n


\n\tThe one winter study of the region, conducted in 2011 and funded by the National Science Foundation, found that plankton in the Bering Sea may not enter a state of diapause after all.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cBased on the measurements we took, they probably can\u2019t survive the winter without lowering their metabolic rates further as the winter season progresses, but they don\u2019t appear to go into a hibernation state as we expected,\u201d Campbell said.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cMany of the animals we studied were copepods, which usually go down to depth to hibernate. But in the Bering Sea and Chukchi Sea there are expansive continental shelves, so there is no deepwater refuge for them to go to. That makes them more vulnerable to climate change because they have no refuge from the increasing temperatures,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n


\n\tIn addition to Campbell, other scientists from the 溏心vlog免费B站 Graduate School of Oceanography involved in the Bering Sea Project are Edward Durbin, Tatiana Rynearson and Bradley Moran.<\/p>\n


\n\tThe Bering Sea Project seeks to understand the impacts of climate change and dynamic sea ice cover on the eastern Bering Sea ecosystem. More than one hundred scientists are engaged in field research and ecosystem modeling to link climate, physical oceanography, plankton, fish, seabirds, marine mammals, humans, traditional knowledge and economic outcomes to better understand the mechanisms that sustain this highly productive region.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NARRAGANSETT, R.I. \u2013 February 24, 2014 \u2013 The health of the Bering Sea fisheries off the coast of Alaska depend largely on the plankton blooms that occur as the sea ice retreats in spring. Sunlight causes phytoplankton to bloom, which provides food to copepods and other zooplankton that are fed upon by fish, crabs and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archives"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58689"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58689\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}