The role of water mass advection in staging of the Southern Ocean Salpa thompsoni populations

Natasha Henschke; Boris Espinasse; Charles A Stock; Xiao Liu; Nicolas Barrier; Evgeny A Pakhomov

doi:10.1038/s41598-023-34231-7

The role of water mass advection in staging of the Southern Ocean Salpa thompsoni populations

Sci Rep. 2023 May 1;13(1):7088. doi: 10.1038/s41598-023-34231-7.

Authors

Natasha Henschke¹, Boris Espinasse², Charles A Stock³, Xiao Liu³, Nicolas Barrier⁴, Evgeny A Pakhomov^{5

6}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada. natashahenschke@gmail.com.
² Department of Arctic and Marine Biology, UiT The Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø, Norway.
³ Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, NOAA, 201 Forrestal Road, Princeton, NJ, 08540, USA.
⁴ MARBEC, University of Montpellier, CNRS, Ifremer, IRD, Sète, France.
⁵ Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada.
⁶ Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada.

Abstract

Salpa thompsoni is an important grazer in the Southern Ocean. Their abundance in the western Antarctic Peninsula is highly variable, varying by up to 5000-fold inter-annually. Here, we use a particle-tracking model to simulate the potential dispersal of salp populations from a source location in the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) to the Palmer Long Term Ecological Research (PAL LTER) study area. Tracking simulations are run from 1998 to 2015, and compared against both a stationary salp population model simulated at the PAL LTER study area and observations from the PAL LTER program. The tracking simulation was able to recreate closely the long-term trend and the higher abundances at the slope stations. The higher abundances observed at slope stations are likely due to the advection of salp populations from a source location in the ACC, highlighting the significant role of water mass circulation in the distribution and abundance of Southern Ocean salp populations.