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Fisheries, Oceanography and Society: Deep-sea Fisheries: Ecology, Economics and Conservation

Preliminary Comparison of the Cephalopod Fauna of the NE US Continental Slope and Bear Seamount (New England Seamount Chain)
Dr Elizabeth (Liz) Shea

Seamounts are biological foci in the deep sea that are notoriously difficult to sample. The biota associated with Bear Seamount, the most inshore of the New England Seamounts, was poorly known until the NOAA ship DELAWARE II began a series of exploratory cruises designed to document the biotic diversity of Bear and neighboring seamounts. Four cruises (DE00-11, DE02-06, DE03-04, DE04-09) have collected midwater and benthic fishes and invertebrates at the seamount summit, slopes and base.

This poster gives a gross overview of the cephalopod taxa collected along the US NE continental slope (DE0408) and Bear Seamount (DE0409). These two back-to-back cruises provide a starting point for a critical evaluation of whether the composition of seamount fauna is specific to the seamount, or is influenced by the composition of the US NE continental slope. Six of the ten most abundant taxa are found on both the slope and on the seamount: Illex illecebrosus, Mastigoteuthis magna, Histioteuthis reversa Taonius pavo, Teuthowenia megalops and Brachioteuthis sp. Three out of 20 species collected on the slope cruise are only found only on the slope: the common neritic sepiolids Rossia sp. and Stoloteuthis leucoptera, and the octopus Bathypolypus bairdii. Fourteen out of 29 species collected at Bear are found only on the seamount.

This poster also describes a future GIS-based analysis of the Bear Seamount biodiversity. Taxa from multiple phyla will be identified to species and the specimen data will be combined with haul and satellite data to examine whether Bear Seamount functions as a hotspot of biodiversity, to examine whether there are statistically significant differences in faunal composition of the seamount top versus the sides and base, and finally to identify ecological parameters that may be used to predict the occurrence of species.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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