Potential environmental drivers of a regional blue mussel mass mortality event (winter of 2014, Breton Sound, France)

Abstract

Highlights ► A significant French production area lost 9000 t of blue mussels in winter 2014. ► We studied potential environmental drivers linked to those unprecedented mortalities. ► This winter 2014 had the sixth highest NAO + index since 1865. ► Such conditions characterized other winters without comparable mortalities in the area. ► Hydrodynamic connectivity participated to specific mortality vector diffusion.

Mapping the Intertidal Microphytobenthos Gross Primary Production, Part II: Merging Remote Sensing and Physical-Biological Coupled Modeling

“…The model was discretized into 100 m by 100 m horizontal grid cells and 20 sigma-levels over depth. The model was run for the same domain as in Polsenaere et al (2017) (Figure 1). The MARS-3D model is fully detailed in Lazure and Dumas (2008).…”

Mortality investigation of Mytilus edulis and Mytilus galloprovincialis in France: An experimental survey under laboratory conditions

“…experiencing high mortality since 2014, the susceptibility of M. galloprovincialis has not been investigated yet. A pathogenic strain of Vibrio splendidus was isolated from moribund mussels sampled in 2014 (Polsenaere et al 2017, Oden el al. 2016 as in some previous mortality events in (Ben Cheikh et al 2015.…”

“…1997). Since 2014, blue mussel production in France has faced sudden and unfamiliar mass mortality outbreaks (90-100%) affecting both juvenile and adult blue mussels along the French Atlantic coasts (Bechemin et al 2015;Polsenaere et al 2017). While M. edulis has been…”

Two Non-indigenous Dreissenids (Dreissena polymorpha and D. rostriformis bugensis) in a Southern Baltic Coastal Lagoon: Variability in Populations of the “Old” and a “New” Immigrant

“…Fluctuations in the abundance of sessile bivalve populations, including those of dreissenids, have been explained by invoking effects of internal and/or external drivers. The former involve primarily recruitment and mortality (e.g., Cockrell et al, 2015;Polsenaere et al, 2017) and intra-specific competition (e.g., Naddafi et al, 2010;D'Hont et al, 2018) as mechanisms of population regulation (Krebs, 1995). In the D. polymorpha population studied here, recruitment might have played a role, as the abundance peaks coincided with the appearance of new cohorts, visible as increased numbers of small (<8 mm) individuals in the population (Wawrzyniak-Wydrowska et al, in prep.).…”