Use of satellite data to identify critical periods for early life survival of northern shrimp in the Gulf of Maine

Abstract

The northern shrimp Pandalus borealis is at its southern limit in the Gulf of Maine (GOM), and recruitment success is higher in years with relatively cool water temperature. However, the mechanisms for the temperature effect are not clear. We used rolling window analysis of daily satellite data to identify critical periods for early life survival of the 1998–2012 northern shrimp year‐classes and to investigate the importance of the phenology of the hatch and bloom. Survival was negatively correlated with sea surface temperature (SST) during a 6‐week period around the time of larval emergence (late winter) and during a 4‐week period in late summer when SST and stratification reached annual maxima. Survival was negatively correlated with chlorophyll‐a concentration (chl‐a) during two 5‐week periods centered approximately a month before the hatch midpoint and around the time of settlement to the benthos. A small‐magnitude winter bloom occurred around the time of the hatch in many years, but our results did not reveal a link between survival and bloom‐hatch phenology. The timing of winter and spring blooms were correlated with SST during the preceding 10 months. A survival model including SST and chl‐a during the critical periods explained 73% of the variance in survival. Summer SST increased significantly during the study period; the other critical variables showed no trend. The rolling windows approach revealed sensitive periods in early life history that may not have otherwise been hypothesized, providing a foundation for research towards a greater understanding of processes affecting recruitment.

It’s about time: A synthesis of changing phenology in the Gulf of Maine ecosystem

“…This hypothesis proposed that good year classes resulted from spatiotemporal alignment (match) of primary and secondary food resources and the pelagic larval period, while poor year classes occurred when there were mismatches (Cushing, , ; Peck, Huebert, & Llopiz, ). Yet, the underlying mechanisms that alter the timing of phytoplankton blooms and definitive links between secondary production and upper trophic levels are complex, variable, and highly uncertain (Edwards & Richardson, ; Friedland et al, ; Richards et al, ). Phytoplankton bloom timing, magnitude, and composition have species‐ and location‐specific impacts on recruitment (Platt, Fuentes‐Yaco, & Frank, ; Trzcinski, Devred, Platt, & Sathyendranath, ), but the duration of spatiotemporal overlap between larval fish and prey may be paramount to year‐class success (Kristiansen, Drinkwater, Lough, & Sundby, ).…”

“…All SST and chlophyll-a concentration Richards et al (2016) TA B L E 1 (Continued) | 543 STAUDINGER ET Al. (Johnson et al, 2016;Kane, 1993Kane, , 2009Manning & Bucklin, 2005;Record et al, 2010).…”

“…Earlier spring blooms were correlated with higher February stratification and lower nutrients (Record et al, 2018), whereas later spring blooms were associated with higher springtime surface salinity (Ji et al, 2007(Ji et al, , 2008Song et al, 2010). Lagged temperature conditions (2-8 months before the bloom) may be important in nearshore areas (Richards, O'Reilly, & Hyde, 2016). Fall bloom timing was consistently found to be negatively correlated with SST and salinity, with higher temperatures and salinity resulting in earlier blooms (Ji et al, 2007(Ji et al, , 2008 drivers observed across bloom studies in the region is likely due in part to the oceanographic and atmospheric conditions specific to the time period examined (i.e., season, decade), but may also be related to sampling techniques, choice of phenology metric, and the temporal resolution and methodology used to evaluate each dataset (Ferreira, Visser, MacKenzie, & Payne, 2014).…”

Regime shifts in fish recruitment on the Northeast US Continental Shelf

“…Mountain & Kane 2010, Richards et al 2016) by using a multivariate approach that aims to identify regimes in fish recruitment per unit spawning stock biomass (a measure of recruitment success) and their underlying drivers. Using stock assessments and survey data, we test for coherent regime shifts in recruitment success of 18 species on the NE Shelf over a 29 yr timespan.…”

Improvement in recruitment of Japanese sardine with delays of the spring phytoplankton bloom in the Sea of Japan

“…Platt et al (2003) explained the result as follows: "the overlapping of the spring bloom and haddock larval periods improves the amount of food for larvae, which in turn promotes the rapid growth of larvae (in accordance with the match-mismatch hypothesis) and improves their survival (with the critical period hypothesis)". This relationship between phytoplankton phenology and recruitment was also applied for carnivore skipjack tuna (Katuwonus pelamis) in the tropical western Pacific (Yen & Lu, 2016), and benthic northern shrimp (Pandalus borealis) along the North Atlantic coast (Fuentes-Yaco, Koeller, Sathyendranath, & Platt, 2007;Koeller et al, 2009;Richards, O'Reilly, & Hyde, 2016). In addition to the feeding environment of larvae, the magnitude of the phytoplankton bloom also has an influence on spawners, e.g., the large autumn bloom in the Georges Bank region off the Canadian Atlantic coast improves individual conditions of haddock females, and then the recruitment (Friedland et al, 2008;Leaf & Friedland, 2014).…”