Fluctuations in marine fish populations: physical processes and numerical modelling
The question of whether variability in hydrodynamics can explain variability in fish recruitment is one that has been pondered for more than 100 years, ever since Pettersson, Helland-Hansen, Hjort, and others, in the early days of ICES, identified the importance of oceanic physical processes to understanding fluctuations in fish populations. In this paper, we outline our present-day understanding of some of these processes. We find that significant progress has been achieved in the past two decades in certain areas, such as in the description of the dynamics of continental shelf regions and in the coupling of hydrodynamics and fish early life stages - including effects at the level of individual larvae. With the advent of sophisticated numerical or computational modelling tools that are now are relatively reliable and available to the research community, quantitative descriptions of the transport and dispersal of larvae and changes in their feeding environment are not uncommon. At the same time, we note that we are not yet able to consider regional studies for more than seasonal time scales, and we have not yet considered basin-scale spatial and temporal processes and their connection and effect on the coastal/shelf regions. These extensions will be necessary as we begin to consider variability on decadal time scales and the synchronicity of the populations’ fluctuations across the ocean basins.
Article from Marine Science Symposia Vol. 215 - 100 years of science under ICES. To access the remaining articles please click on the keyword "MSS Volume 215".
