Aquatic Sciences Meeting, Albuquerque 2001

SS42 American Fisheries Society/ASLO Joint Session: Scaling Fisheries From Egg to Adult and Back Again (Spatial and Temporal Connections)

Date: Wednesday, February 14, 2001, Time: 10:45:00 AM

Location: Sandia/Santa Ana

Pepin, P, , Department of Fisheries and Oceans, St. John's, NF, Canada, pepin@athena.nwafc.nf.ca

Dower, J, F, University of British Columbia, Department of Earth and Oceans Sciences, Vancouver, B.C., Canada, dower@eos.ub.ca

Davidson, F, J, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Department of Physics and Physical Oceanography, St. John's, NF, Canada, davidsof@ge.adfa.edu.au

A SPATIALLY-EXPLICIT STUDY OF PREY-PREDATOR INTERACTIONS IN LARVAL FISH: ASSESSING THE INFLUENCE OF FOOD AND PREDATOR ABUNDANCE ON GROWTH AND SURVIVAL

We apply a coupled bio-physical model to reconstruct the environmental history of radiated shanny larvae in Conception Bay, Newfoundland. Data on the larvae, their prey and predators were collected during a two week period. Our goal was to determine whether environmentally explicit information can be used to infer the characteristics of those individuals that are most likely to survive. Backward reconstruction was used to assess the influence of variations in the feeding environment on changes in the growth rates of individual larvae. Forward projections were used to assess the impact of predators on the cumulative probability distribution of growth rates on the population of larvae in different areas of the bay. There was relatively little influence of current feeding conditions on increment widths for larvae less than 15 days old but there was some evidence of a slight positive influence of increasing prey abundance on growth beyond 15 days of age. Patterns of selective mortality indicate that fast growing individuals suffered higher mortality rates, suggesting they are growing into a predator's prey field.

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Aquatic Sciences Meeting, Albuquerque 2001

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