Multi-scale Fish-habitat Associations and the Use of Habitat Surrogates to Predict the Organisation and Abundance of Deep-water Fish Assemblages  

Authors / CoAuthors

Anderson, T.J. | Syms, C. | Roberts, D.A. | Howard, D.F.

Abstract

Deep-water demersal fishes are an important component of continental shelf and slope ecosystems and play an important role in the economies of many countries. Strong and predictable relationships of fishes with seabed habitats, in conjunction with rapid advances in acoustic seabed mapping capabilities, indicate there is great potential for using habitats as proxies or ‘surrogates’ to predict species distribution and abundance patterns at broad regional scales. However, few studies have evaluated this potential in complex seabed environments. In this study, we examined the spatial distributions, assemblage composition, and benthic habitat associations of deep-water demersal fish species over three spatial scales across Cordell Bank, a deep-water bank in central California. Demersal fishes were counted and habitats quantified from 60 strip-transects allocated over the extent of the bank using in situ observer and video-recorded data from the two-person Delta submersible. Both abundance and distribution of demersal fish species on Cordell Bank were strongly correlated with spatial location and habitat composition on the bank. Habitat structure was heterogeneous at several spatial scales. At broad scales, the rocky bank itself contained the highest diversity of both habitats and fishes. At intermediate scales, transition zones (10-100s of m wide) between the bank and continental slope and shelf sediments supported a diverse and characteristic suite of fish species. Habitats were also heterogeneous at finer-scales (1-10s of m) within these broad-scale zones, and fish responses to these habitat characteristics were taxon-specific, and often contingent on the spatial configuration of fine scale habitats within the broader-scale landscape. The results of this study indicate that for many species it is not sufficient to just know the fine-scale habitat association to predict fish assemblages.

Product Type

nonGeographicDataset

eCat Id

69974

Contact for the resource

Digital Object Identifier

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jembe.2009.07.033

Keywords

• External PublicationScientific Journal Paper

( Theme )

• habitat

( Theme )

• marine survey

( Theme )

• marine

• USCA

Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classification (ANZSRC)

• Earth Sciences

• Published_External

Publication Date

2009-01-01T00:00:00

Creation Date

Security Constraints

Australian Government Security ClassificationSystem    

Classification - unclassified

Legal Constraints

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence    

Access - license

Use - license

Status

Purpose

Maintenance Information

unknown

Topic Category

geoscientificInformation

Series Information

Lineage

Unknown

Parent Information

Extents

[37.0, 39.0, 122.0, 124.0]

Reference System

Spatial Resolution

Service Information

Associations

Downloads and Links

Link to Publication  

Source Information

Source data not available.