Statewide | Fishes and Fish Habitats MASTER’S POSTER PRESENTATION Combining predator diet and survey data to understand spatial and temporal patterns of forage fish in Alaska Presenter: Lindsay Turner , lturner14@alaska.edu, University of Alaska Fairbanks Curry Cunningham , cjcunningham@alaska.edu Maymui Arimitsu , marimitsu@usgs.gov, USGS Alaska Science Center Forage fish are energy rich species that play a crucial role in the diets of seabirds, marine mammals, and commercially important fish in Alaska. Understanding the spatial and temporal variability of forage species would help explain complex predator-prey interactions and assess potential trophic vulnerabilities to climate change within Alaska marine ecosystems. However, forage fish exhibit diverse life history strategies and are often patchily distributed, making consistent spatial and temporal sampling of forage fish abundance challenging. Additionally, many forage fish are not targeted by direct fisheries, so resources for forage fish assessment are often limited. In this study we compiled data from multiple sources, including trawls, beach seines, plankton surveys, and predator diets, in order to assess spatial and temporal variation in forage fish populations within Alaska. The expanded spatial and temporal scope from the resulting combined forage fish dataset will inform occurrence and abundance trends across space and time. We describe and visualize current data compilation efforts on forage fish abundance and distribution in terms of spatial and temporal availability. We present spatio-temporal models of key forage species (Pacific sand lance, Pacific herring, and Pacific capelin) distributions in the Gulf of Alaska, Aleutian Islands, and Bering Sea. This first step towards a large-scale understanding of forage fish distribution in Alaska will facilitate greater understanding of forage fish dynamics, trophic processes in marine ecosystems, and risk analysis in areas of oil and gas development.
Alaska Marine Science Symposium 2023 225
Made with FlippingBook flipbook maker