Cold-water coral reef communities and fish: an important food-web link in the deep-sea?

Are you fascinated by the deep sea?
Do you want to understand food web interactions in cold-water coral ecosystems?

Background

Corals and coral reefs are typically associated with tropical warm waters, but in the last decade, extensive cold-water coral reefs along the European margin have been discovered. These reefs are extensive 3-dimensional structures on the seafloor and provide habitat for a very rich community of corals, sponges, bivalves, polychaetes and shrimps. Food web studies of the reef community have shown that these are among the most productive benthic ecosystems in the deep sea and hence a comparatively large amount of secondary production is potentially available as food for higher trophic levels such as fish. Although fish stocks are reportedly higher in and around cold-water coral reefs, the question is whether this is related ‘simply’ to the presence of the 3-dimensional structure of the reef, or whether the high food availability also plays a role. Disentangling the strength of this food web relation will aid the development of management strategies of these fragile ecosystems.

Approach: Models of the food web structure of cold-water coral communities at various sites in the northeast Atlantic have been developed in our lab using food web modeling. These models will be extended with fish compartments to quantify the predation pressure of fish on the reef community. These food web models are developed within the CoralFISH project.