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Impacts of depleting forage species in the California Current

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 April 2013

ISAAC C. KAPLAN ,
CHRISTOPHER J. BROWN ,
ELIZABETH A. FULTON ,
IRIS A. GRAY ,
JOHN C. FIELD  and
ANTHONY D.M. SMITH
ISAAC C. KAPLAN*
Affiliation:
Conservation Biology Division, Northwest Fisheries Science Center, National Marine Fisheries Service, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 2725 Montlake Boulevard E, Seattle WA 98112, USA
CHRISTOPHER J. BROWN
Affiliation:
Climate Adaptation Flagship, CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research, Ecosciences Precinct, GPO Box 2583, Brisbane, Queensland 4102, Australia
ELIZABETH A. FULTON
Affiliation:
CSIRO Wealth from Oceans Flagship, Division of Marine and Atmospheric Research, GPO Box 1538, Hobart, Tasmania 7001, Australia
IRIS A. GRAY
Affiliation:
Conservation Biology Division, Northwest Fisheries Science Center, National Marine Fisheries Service, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 2725 Montlake Boulevard E, Seattle WA 98112, USA
JOHN C. FIELD
Affiliation:
Fisheries Ecology Division, Southwest Fisheries Science Center, National Marine Fisheries Service, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 110 Shaffer Road, Santa Cruz, CA 95060, USA
ANTHONY D.M. SMITH
Affiliation:
CSIRO Wealth from Oceans Flagship, Division of Marine and Atmospheric Research, GPO Box 1538, Hobart, Tasmania 7001, Australia
*
*Correspondence: Dr Isaac Kaplan, Tel: +1 206 302 2446 Fax: +1 206 860 3394 e-mail: isaac.kaplan@noaa.gov
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Summary

Human demands for food and fish meal are often in direct competition with forage needs of marine mammals, birds and piscivorous harvested fish. Here, two well-developed ecosystem models for the California Current on the West Coast of the USA were used to test the impacts on other parts of the ecosystem of harvesting euphausiids, forage fish, mackerel and mesopelagic fish such as myctophids. Depleting individual forage groups to levels that led to maximum sustainable yield of those groups may have both positive and negative effects on other species in the California Current. The most common impacts were on predators of forage groups, some of which showed declines of >20% under the scenarios that involved depletion of forage groups to 40% of unfished levels. Depletion of euphausiids and forage fish, which each comprise >10% of system biomass, had the largest impact on other species. Depleting euphausiids to 40% of unfished levels altered the abundance of 13–30% of the other functional groups by >20%; while depleting forage fish to 40% altered the abundance of 20–50% of the other functional groups by >20%. There are clear trade-offs between the harvest of forage groups and the ability of the California Current to sustain other trophic levels. Though higher trophic level species, such as groundfish, are often managed on the basis of reference points that can reduce biomass to below half of unfished levels, this level of forage species removal is likely to impact the abundance of other target species, protected species and the structure of the ecosystem.

Keywords

ecosystem modellingeuphausiidsfood webforage fishlower trophic level speciessardine
Type
THEMATIC SECTION: Politics, Science and Policy of Reference Points for Resource Management
Information
Environmental Conservation , Volume 40 , Issue 4 , December 2013 , pp. 380 - 393
Copyright
Copyright © Foundation for Environmental Conservation 2013 

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