GLOBEC Program
Water properties, currents and zooplankton distribution over a submarine canyon during upwelling-favorable conditions
Updated by Carine Vindeirinho under the supervision of Susan Allen
GLOBEC stands for Global Ocean Ecosystem Dynamics and has been created to improve the cooperation of scientists in order to "advance our understanding of the structure and functioning of the global ocean ecosystem, its major subsystems, and its response to physical forcing so that a capability can be developed to forecast the response of the marine ecosystem to global change" (Roger Harris).
The three major gaps in our knowledge of the marine ecosystem are:
- the dynamics of zooplankton population relative to phytoplankton and to their major predators,
- the influence of physical forcing on these dynamics,
- the estimation of biological and physical parameters associated with the dynamics of zooplankton relative to phytoplankton.
In order to fill these gaps, there are six major elements in this project: the modelling of the Central North East Pacific, the observation of the Central North East Pacific, the modelling of the Continental Margin, time-series observations of the Continental Shelf, process study of the Continental Shelf, and modelling of the Continental Shelf.
Determining the flow patterns around submarine canyons off the West Coast of Vancouver Island and their significance in inhibiting offshore and along-shore zooplankton advection will be, as part of the process study of the Continental Shelf, my contribution to GLOBEC. This work will be done in cooperation with Susan Allen (UBC), my supervisor, Rick Thomson (IOS, Institute of Ocean Sciences) and David Mackas (IOS).
My thesis research is part of GLOBEC. I am, under the supervision of Susan Allen, studying the influence of canyons in general and Barkley Canyon in particular on the aggregation of zooplankton.
Zooplankton is the animal group of the plankton. They are the secondary producers in the food chain and the primary consummers of their vegetal counterpart, the phytoplankton. They are very important as they are the base of the alimentation of fish. To study the influence of submarine canyons on zooplankton aggregation, currents, enhanced upwelling, separation of the different stages (larval, adults), ontogenetic migration are looked at and canyon's interaction with the physical oceanography of the region is studied.
The results of this research are presented as follow. CTD data (Conductivity, Temperature, Depth) was gathered in Barkley Canyon during a cuise at the end of July 1997 and used to characterize the physical behaviour of the canyon (upwelling, temperature/salinity characteristics...). Mooring data presents time-series of currents, temperature and salinity and wind data are also given. Zooplankton data acquired during the cruise from bongos tows is analysed and studied in comparison with the physical behaviour of the canyon. The summary of the results can be found in the research results section.
