Ecosystem oceanography: understanding the dynamics of a changing ocean

My research helps to gain deeper insights into the causes and consequences of recent changes in marine ecosystems. Over the past years we have seen a dramatic shift in perception, towards the realization that the effects of fishing, climate change and pollution have now become dominant ecological drivers in the ocean. My own research has played a major role in this realization, and these topics are now a growing focus of marine science laboratories around the world. Following these developments, the new discipline of 'ecosystem oceanography' has emerged, with a focus on understanding and predicting global change in the oceans from the bottom to the top of the food web. Much of the recent work in my laboratory has focused on top predators, namely large pelagic fish, sharks, and marine mammals, documenting changes in their abundance and diversity from fisheries data and other sources. Increasingly, however, we are discovering concomitant changes at lower trophic levels, particularly in plankton organisms that provide the base of the marine food web, and that may influence changes at upper levels through trophic interactions. Over the next five years my laboratory will analyze the potentially complex interdependencies of these observed changes in predator and plankton abundance. To gain a comprehensive understanding we will integrate data analysis, field experiments, and modeling approaches. Specifically we will use large, floating mesocoms to test whether climate warming is a major factor in observed changes in phytoplankton abundance, and how this may affect the rest of the food web. We will apply newly developed statistical tools for tracking fish stock abundance and productivity in response to both changes in fishing and resource availability. Finally, we will use these results in the development of realistic ocean-atmosphere models that include important ecological interactions and that provide the capacity to predict future changes in the composition and functioning of marine ecosystems. Taken together, this work will be important for forecasting future ecological changes in the ocean, and to help with an ecosystem-based approach to marine resource management.