10 April
George Hunt
Research Professor, UW Aquatic & Fishery Sciences
Effects of Seaonal Sea Ice on the Southeast Bering Sea Ecosystem
Abstract
Seasonal sea ice cover is a defining feature of the eastern Bering Sea Shelf. It forms in the northern Bering and is advected south by winter winds. The timing of melt back influences the timing of the spring bloom, and the temperature at which the bloom occurs. Zooplankton are sensitive to both timing and temperature and different size fractions of the zooplankton are favored in warm water, late blooms than in early, cold water blooms. These differences in zooplankton influence the fate of production and the availability of prey for juvenile an adult pollock, as well as for other top predators. Small zooplankton are abundant in warm years and are prey for larval and age-0 pollock, but larger zooplankton may be missing over the shelf. In colder years, large zooplankton can be abundant and age-1 pollock, planktivorous seabirds and baleen whales may have abundant prey. Evidence is accumulating for bottom-up as well as top-down control of mid-trophic levels, with evidence that zooplankton serve a critical transfer function that can limit upper trophic level production. Thus changes in sea ice conditions ripple through the whole food web, to fish and birds and marine mammals.
Bio
Dr. George Hunt joined the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences at the University of Washington as a Research Professor in 2005 after retiring from the University of California, Irvine. He received his BA (1965) and PhD (1971) in Biology from Harvard University and began teaching and research at UCI in 1970. Now, he divides his time between Seattle and Friday Harbor, Washington. Dr. Hunt began his career studying the behavioral and reproductive ecology of gulls in southern California and British Columbia. This work led to studies of seabird reproductive ecology on the Pribilof Islands and of the foraging ecology of seabirds in the Bering Sea, the Barents Sea, the North Water Polynya, and the Southern Ocean. More recently, Dr. Hunt has participated in ecosystem-level studies of the southeastern Bering Sea and the Aleutian Archipelago. He was instrumental in the development of the new Bering Ecosystem Study (BEST) and the GLOBEC regional program Ecosystem Studies of Sub-arctic Seas (ESSAS). He is Co-Chair of the Science Steering Committee of ESSAS. He is a member of the Scientific and Statistical Committee of the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council. He was the past Co-Chair of PICES WG 11 on “Prey consumption by marine mammals and seabirds in the PICES area”, and is a member of the PICES CFAME Task Team.
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