Oceanus.

v. 26, no. 4 (1983

The Hierarchic treatment of marine ecological information from spatial networks of benthic platforms

Measuring biodiversity simultaneously in different locations, at different temporal scales, and over wide spatial scales is of strategic importance for the improvement of our understanding of the functioning of marine ecosystems and for the conservation of their biodiversity. Monitoring networks of cabled observatories, along with other docked autonomous systems (e.g., Remotely Operated Vehicles [ROVs], Autonomous Underwater Vehicles [AUVs], and crawlers), are being conceived and established at a spatial scale capable of tracking energy fluxes across benthic and pelagic compartments, as well as across geographic ecotones. At the same time, optoacoustic imaging is sustaining an unprecedented expansion in marine ecological monitoring, enabling the acquisition of new biological and environmental data at an appropriate spatiotemporal scale. At this stage, one of the main problems for an effective application of these technologies is the processing, storage, and treatment of the acquired complex ecological information. Here, we provide a conceptual overview on the technological developments in the multiparametric generation, storage, and automated hierarchic treatment of biological and environmental information required to capture the spatiotemporal complexity of a marine ecosystem. In doing so, we present a pipeline of ecological data acquisition and processing in different steps and prone to automation. We also give an example of population biomass, community richness and biodiversity data computation (as indicators for ecosystem functionality) with an Internet Operated Vehicle (a mobile crawler). Finally, we discuss the software requirements for that automated data processing at the level of cyber-infrastructures with sensor calibration and control, data banking, and ingestion into large data portals.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Oceanus.

v. 34, no. 2 (1991

PICES Press, Vol. 20, No. 1, Winter 2012

•2011 PICES Science: A Note from the Science Board Chairman (pp. 1-6) •2011 PICES Awards (pp. 7-9) •Beyond the Terrible Disaster of the Great East Japan Earthquake (pp. 10-12) •A New Era of PICES-ICES Scientific Cooperation (p. 13) •New PICES Jellyfish Working Group Formed (pp. 14-15) •PICES Working Group on North Pacific Climate Variability (pp. 16-18) •Final U.S. GLOBEC Symposium and Celebration (pp. 19-25) •2011 PICES Rapid Assessment Survey (pp. 26-29) •Introduction to Rapid Assessment Survey Methodologies for Detecting Non-indigenous Marine Species (pp. 30-31) •The 7th International Conference on Marine Bioinvasions (pp. 32-33) •NOWPAP/PICES/WESTPAC Training Course on Remote Sensing Data Analysis (pp. 34-36) •PICES-2011 Workshop on “Trends in Marine Contaminants and their Effects in a Changing Ocean” (pp. 37-39) •The State of the Western North Pacific in the First Half of 2011 (pp. 40-42) •Yeosu Symposium theme sessions (p. 42) •The Bering Sea: Current Status and Recent Events (pp. 43-44) •News of the Northeast Pacific Ocean (pp. 45-47) •Recent and Upcoming PICES Publications (p. 47) •New leadership for the PICES Fishery Science Committee (p. 48

Decadal changes of the Western Arabian sea ecosystem

Historical data from oceanographic expeditions and remotely sensed data on outgoing longwave radiation, temperature, wind speed and ocean color in the western Arabian Sea (1950–2010) were used to investigate decadal trends in the physical and biochemical properties of the upper 300 m. 72 % of the 29,043 vertical profiles retrieved originated from USA and UK expeditions. Increasing outgoing longwave radiation, surface air temperatures and sea surface temperature were identified on decadal timescales. These were well correlated with decreasing wind speeds associated with a reduced Siberian High atmospheric anomaly. Shoaling of the oxycline and nitracline was observed as well as acidification of the upper 300 m. These physical and chemical changes were accompanied by declining chlorophyll-a concentrations, vertical macrofaunal habitat compression, declining sardine landings and an increase of fish kill incidents along the Omani coast

Oceanus.

v. 31, no. 2 (1988

The continuous plankton recorder survey: A long-term, basin-scale oceanic time series

In the 1920s, before the advent of echo sounders, fishery biologists were greatly concerned with assisting the fisherman to locate schools of pelagic fish. One of the approaches they developed was to relate the distribution of the planktonic food organisms to the presence of the schools of predators such as herring (Clupea harengus). The British planktologist, Alister Hardy, who had already carried out extensive studies on the feeding preferences of herring (Hardy, 1926a), initiated a program to examine the fishermen's contention that herring schools avoided 'green', i.e., phytoplankton-rich, water but could be correlated with high concentrations of zooplankton. This practical program was centered on the use of a specially developed instrument, the 'Plankton Indicator', designed to be used by the fisherman to assist in the search for suitable waters. It had limited success in its main aim but, as a collecting device, it embodied several profoundly important features. It was a simple instrument which was robust enough to be deployed and recovered by the crew of commercial vessels (in this case fishing vessels) while they were underway. The Indicator however, was no more than a high speed net which integrated the plankton over the area of sampling, but Hardy had also become interested in describing the patchiness of planktonic populations. He thus developed the Continuous Plankton Recorder (CPR) where he substituted the fixed filter screen of the Indicator by a continually moving length of silk mesh. The screen traversed at constant speed across the path of the incoming water and the trapped organisms were retained in place by sandwiching beneath an additional second mesh screen. Thus, knowing the speed of the towing vessel and the shooting and hauling positions, the spatial patterns of the plankton could be determined. Hardy took the first CPR to the Antarctic where he used it in the Southern Atlantic (Hardy, 1926b) and later deployed it in the North Sea to make some of the earliest contiguous records of plankton patchiness

Oceanus.

v. 26, no. 3 (1983

Modern Black Sea oceanography applied to the end-Permian extinction event

The modern Black Sea has a mixed upper layer in the top 150−200 m of the water column, below which the water is anoxic, separated from the mixed layer by a redox boundary. There is limited vertical movement of water. Pyrite framboids form in the water column of the anoxic zone, then have been traditionally interpreted to sink immediately and accumulate in the sediments of the Black Sea. Thus the occurrence of framboids in sediments in the rock record is widely interpreted to indicate poorly oxygenated to anoxic conditions in ancient environments. However, in the Permian−Triassic boundary (PTB) microbialites of South China, which formed in shallow marine conditions in contact with the atmosphere, the published occurrence of framboids is inconsistent with abundant gastropod and ostracod shells in the microbialite. Furthermore, in the modern Black Sea: (a) framboids may be suspended, attached to organic matter in the water column, thus not settle to the sea floor immediately after formation; and (b) the redox zone is an unstable complex area subject to rapid vertical water movement including occasional upwelling. The model presented here supposes that upwelling through the redox zone can lead to upward transport of suspended pyrite framboids into the mixed layer. Advective circulation could then draw suspended framboids onto the shelf to be deposited in oxygenated sediments. In the Permian−Triassic transition, if framboids were upwelled from below the redox boundary and mixed with oxygenated waters, sediment deposited in these conditions could provide a mixed signal for potentially misleading interpretations of low oxygen conditions. However, stratigraphic sampling resolution of post-extinction microbialites is currently insufficient to demonstrate possible separation of framboid-bearing layers from those where framboids are absent. Profound differences between microbialite constructors and sequences between western and eastern Tethys demonstrate barriers to migration of microbial organisms. However, framboid occurrences in both areas indicate upwelling and emphasise vertical movement of water from the lower to upper ocean, yet the mixed layer advective motion may not have been as effective as in modern oceans. In the modern Black Sea, such advection is highly effective in water mixing, and provides an interesting contrast with the PTB times.Russian work was supported by EU-funded project PIRSES-GA-2009-247512

Oceanus.

v. 44, no. 2 (2005