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Seasonal changes of community structure and vertical distribution/migration for mesopelagic fish in the western subarctic Pacific

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 October 2024

Minoru Kitamura Open the ORCID record for Minoru Kitamura [Opens in a new window]  and
Naofumi Murata
Minoru Kitamura*
Affiliation:
Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC), 2-15 Natsushima, Yokosuka, Kanagawa 237-0061, Japan
Naofumi Murata
Affiliation:
Nago Museum, 4-20-50 Onaka, Nago, Okinawa 905-0017, Japan
*
Corresponding author: Minoru Kitamura; Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

Although mesopelagic fish dominate the oceanic ecosystem, they remain one of the least investigated components. From the vertically stratified sample collections, we investigated community structure, vertical distribution and diel/ontogenetic vertical migration covering four seasons for larval and juvenile/adult mesopelagic fish at the time-series station K2 in the Western Subarctic Gyre of the North Pacific. We collected 10 and 20 species of larval and juvenile/adult fish, respectively. Among the larval fish community, Leuroglossus schmidti was the most abundant; total abundances except L. schmidti were low throughout the year; species richness of myctophids were low. Among the 20 species of juvenile/adult fish, larvae of only six species were collected; thus, most mesopelagic fish species do not use the Western Subarctic Gyre as their nursery. In the juvenile/adult fish community, Stenobrachius leucopsarus and Stenobrachius nannochir were abundant. Species diversity and total abundance in the warm seasons (summer and autumn) were higher than in the cold seasons (winter and spring). The decreasing of species diversity and total abundance during the cold seasons was probably affected by horizontal migrations of fish for reproduction toward the southern transition or subarctic slope areas. Stenobrachius leucopsarus was distributed at shallow depths with opportunistic diel vertical migration (DVM); in contrast Stenobrachius nannochir occurred at greater depths, without DVM. The distribution depths of S. leucopsarus during day and those of S. nannochir changed seasonally and synchronously; shallowest in autumn, deepest in spring.

Keywords

community structuremesopelagic fishseasonal changevertical distribution and migrationwestern subarctic Pacific
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom , Volume 104 , 2024 , e91
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom

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