IOCAG: Biological Oceanography and Global Change

Affiliated Research areas

• Biostatistics

Scientific Areas

• Not available

Keywords

• Fishes
• Climate Change
• Biological carbon pump
• Diel Vertical Migration
• Zooplankton
• Micronekton
• Phenotypic plasticity
• Shapefunction structure
• Intrapopulation
• Oceanographic
• Micronekton
• Physiology
• Metabolism
• Respiration
• Zooplankton

Summary

- Physical-Biological Interactions in the Ocean: The effect of the physical frame and climate on the diversity, abundance, biomass, distribution, physiology, and ecology of plankton communities is of importance in order to study the natural variability of life in the ocean. Then long-term monitoring of physical-biological coupling is a key strategy to understand future changes in the pelagic ecosystem related to increasing temperatures in a high CO2 ocean. In this context, the study of mesoscale processes such as fronts, eddies and filaments, and processes related to eastern boundary currents such as upwelling systems or oligotrophic gyres are also main objectives for the research group.
- The Ocean Carbon Pump: The role of zooplankton and micronekton: Carbon export and sequestration in the ocean is of paramount importance to assess the role of the ocean to mitigate anthropogenic induced climate change. Vertical migrants can enhance the biological carbon pump by transferring carbon at depth due to the so-called active flux. This scarcely known process jointly with particulate (passive) flux is hypothesized to match biogeochemical flux estimates in the ocean. Our group is having a leading role in the assessment of the active flux in the ocean by measuring zooplankton and micronekton migrations using large nets, acoustics, and optical systems, in order to disentangle the role of these organisms in carbon export and sequestration.
- Fisheries Oceanography: The ecosystem approach to fisheries is opening new perspectives for the assessment of recruitment in fish and crustacean populations. In a context of overexploitation of the major fishing grounds, the knowledge of spawning areas and larvae drift is of paramount importance for fisheries management. We are interested in the study of the interaction between the upwelling off Northwest Africa and the Canary Islands, mainly the transport of fish and crustacean larvae to the islands. This process is of interest for local fishermen as for instance filaments promote an increase in small pelagic fishes, giving rise to a biological connectivity of clear socio-economic importance.
- Plankton Physiology and Ecology: Physiological processes such as feeding, egestion, respiration, excretion, and growth are key processes to understand the transfer of energy and matter in the ocean. During the last decades, we have been working on the role of micro-, meso-, macrozooplankton, and micronekton in the ocean carbon flux from the Arctic to Antarctic waters. We allocate an important effort to unveil the relationship between physiological processes such as respiration, nitrogen/carbon excretion, and growth, as well as the enzymatic proxies normally used in oceanography to estimate the role of these organisms in the carbon pump.
- Phenotypic Plasticity in A Changing Climate: Global anthropogenic climate change is a significant threat to the persistence of species and the biodiversity of ecosystems. Consequently, predicting the response of organisms to projected environmental change is critical to conservation and management planning. The response of individuals is linked to its adaptive plasticity to new environmental conditions, which affects to their physiology, behaviour and fitness. The Canary Islands are an unparalleled setting for study due to variability of oceanographic conditions amongst islands and to their interaction with the upwelling off Northwest Africa. Moreover, this line of research is directly linked to all the lines above-mentioned lines, and therefore constitutes an indirect support to them.