ORCID Profile
0000-0003-2149-7696
Current Organisation
Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center
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Publisher: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Date: 02-05-2022
Abstract: Corals are a major habitat-building life-form on tropical reefs that support a quarter of all species in the ocean and provide ecosystem services to millions of people. Marine heat waves continue to threaten and shape reef ecosystems by killing in idual coral colonies and reducing their ersity. However, marine heat waves are spatially and temporally heterogeneous, and so too are the environmental and biological factors mediating coral resilience during and following thermal events. This combination results in highly variable outcomes at both the coral bleaching and mortality stages of every event. This, in turn, impedes the assessment of changing reef-scale patterns of thermal tolerance or places of resistance known as reef refugia. We developed a large-scale, high-resolution coral mortality monitoring capability based on airborne imaging spectroscopy and applied it to a major marine heat wave in the Hawaiian Islands. While water depth and thermal stress strongly mediated coral mortality, relative coral loss was also inversely correlated with preheat-wave coral cover, suggesting the existence of coral refugia. Subsequent mapping analyses indicated that potential reef refugia underwent up to 40% lower coral mortality compared with neighboring reefs, despite similar thermal stress. A combination of human and environmental factors, particularly coastal development and sedimentation levels, differentiated resilient reefs from other more vulnerable reefs. Our findings highlight the role that coral mortality mapping, rather than bleaching monitoring, can play for targeted conservation that protects more surviving corals in our changing climate.
Publisher: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Date: 11-11-2019
Abstract: Life for many of the world’s marine fish begins at the ocean surface. Ocean conditions dictate food availability and govern survivorship, yet little is known about the habitat preferences of larval fish during this highly vulnerable life-history stage. Here we show that surface slicks, a ubiquitous coastal ocean convergence feature, are important nurseries for larval fish from many ocean habitats at ecosystem scales. Slicks had higher densities of marine phytoplankton (1.7-fold), zooplankton (larval fish prey 3.7-fold), and larval fish (8.1-fold) than nearby ambient waters across our study region in Hawai‘i. Slicks contained larger, more well-developed in iduals with competent swimming abilities compared to ambient waters, suggesting a physiological benefit to increased prey resources. Slicks also disproportionately accumulated prey-size plastics, resulting in a 60-fold higher ratio of plastics to larval fish prey than nearby waters. Dissections of hundreds of larval fish found that 8.6% of in iduals in slicks had ingested plastics, a 2.3-fold higher occurrence than larval fish from ambient waters. Plastics were found in 7 of 8 families dissected, including swordfish (Xiphiidae), a commercially targeted species, and flying fish (Exocoetidae), a principal prey item for tuna and seabirds. Scaling up across an ∼1,000 km 2 coastal ecosystem in Hawai‘i revealed slicks occupied only 8.3% of ocean surface habitat but contained 42.3% of all neustonic larval fish and 91.8% of all floating plastics. The ingestion of plastics by larval fish could reduce survivorship, compounding threats to fisheries productivity posed by overfishing, climate change, and habitat loss.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 09-2023
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 25-09-2023
Publisher: Research Square Platform LLC
Date: 17-11-2022
DOI: 10.21203/RS.3.RS-2241908/V1
Abstract: The influence of depth and associated gradients in light, nutrients, and plankton on the ecological organisation of tropical reef communities was first described over six decades ago but remains untested across broad geographies. Humans have also become the dominant driver of planetary change, requiring we re-visit historic ecological paradigms to ensure they capture the dynamics of contemporary ecological systems. Analysing ,500 in-water reef fish surveys between 0–30 m depth across reef slopes at 35 islands in the Pacific, we assess whether a depth gradient consistently predicts variation in reef fish biomass. We reveal predictable ecological organisation in the absence of local human populations, with increased biomass of planktivores and piscivores, and decreased biomass of primary consumers with increasing depth. Bathymetric steepness also had a striking influence on biomass patterns, primarily for planktivores, emphasising potential links between local hydrodynamics and the upslope propagation of pelagic subsidies to the shallows. However, signals of resource-driven depth zonation were altered or lost at populated islands, likely due to depleted fish biomass baselines. While principles of depth zonation broadly held, our findings expose limitations of the paradigm for predicting ecological dynamics where human-mediated impacts confound the connections between ecological communities and their surrounding environment.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 18-02-2019
Location: United States of America
No related grants have been discovered for Jamison Gove.