Impact of changing oceanographic conditions on species composition and abundance of zooplankton on the fishing grounds at Cape Navarin and their importance for the Russian pollock fishery in the Bering Sea

Abstract

Seasonal and interannual variability of zooplankton in the area at Cape Navarin are considered on the base of long-term surveys. This area is the main fishing grounds for Russian pollock fishery in the Bering Sea. Species composition of zooplankton changes cardinally during the feeding period: large-size copepods prevail in summer, but euphausiids, mainly the krill Thysanoessa inermis - in autumn. Year-to-year changes of the zooplankton abundance are species-specific and driven by different environmental factors. The water circulation is crucially important for such allochtonous species as krill by transporting them from the spawning areas. Advection either from the south, i.e. from the continental slope (till 2006), or from the east and west, i.e. from the shelf (in 2007-2014), was observed in the last two decades that corresponded to replacing of relatively warm oceanographic regime by relatively cold regime and could be traced by dynamics of the ice cover and the cold water pool area on the eastern Bering Sea shelf. The advection from the slope provides the krill transport to the area at Cape Navarin, but conditions of the cold regime limit the transport. From the other hand, the cold oceanographic regime is favorable for reproduction of many zooplankton species, including krill, because of higher primary productivity. As the result, the krill and some other mass zooplankton species have a bell-shape dependence of their abundance on water temperature: they have the maximal biomass in relatively warm years within the cold periods and in relatively cold years within the warm periods. In the years with severe winters, the pollock starts its back migration early, in August-September because of seasonal depletion of copepods and lack of krill, while the years with warm winters are also unfavorable for long feeding of pollock in the Navarin area because of low abundance of many zooplankton species. «Moderate» conditions are optimal for long feeding of pollock in this area, when the Russian fishery continues here longer, till November-December, with the annual landings > 500,000 t (as in 1996-1999, 2001, 2007-2008).