Collaborative Research: Recovery of Seamount Precious Coral Beds From Heavy Trawling Disturbance

合作研究：从严重拖网捕捞干扰中恢复海山珍贵珊瑚床

• 批准号: 1334652
• 负责人: Amy Baco-Taylor
• 金额: $ 56.63万
• 依托单位: Florida State University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2014
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2014-07-01 至 2019-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1334652&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; Recovery; Seamount; Precious

Resilience, and the related concept of recovery, provides insights into ecosystem function, connectivity, and succession. In the marine realm, most resilience studies have focused on shallow-water ecosystems but increasing anthropogenic impacts in the deep-sea are making studies of resilience and recovery in the deep-sea time-critical, with deep-sea hard-substrate habitats and large-scale disturbances having received the least attention. Ironically one of the key anthropogenic impacts to the seafloor, fish trawling, provides an experimental design to understand processes of recovery from large-scale disturbance. Seamounts, with a high proportion of hard-substrate habitat, discreet locations for sampling, and extensive disturbance from fish trawling, provide an excellent natural laboratory to study the recovery aspect of resilience. Additionally, the abundance, numerical dominance, high biomass, and diversity of deep-sea corals on seamounts make them ideal model organisms for these studies.The goal of this project is to examine a series of locations in the far Northwestern Hawaiian Islands (NWHI) and the Emperor Seamount Chain (ESC) to address the hypothesis, based on predictions of low resilience and decadal recovery times for disturbed seamounts, that deep-sea coral beds in the NWHI have not recovered despite the end of trawling 30+ years ago. To test this hypothesis, the PIs will survey a series of replicate seamounts at three levels of fish trawling intensity using autonomous and remote underwater vehicles to conduct surveys and targeted sampling of the seamount fauna and especially deep-sea corals. The PIs will focus on three specific aspects of the seamount communities: community structure, age structure of precious corals using a verified size-age curve, and genetic structure of precious corals using DNA microsatellites. Using these methods the PIs will be able to predict the time since coral colonization on any particular seamount as well as source populations of the recent colonizers.These seamounts represent a natural experiment with the added factor of time since the establishment of the exclusive economic zone, and provide an unparalleled opportunity to address seamount recovery on decadal time scales. The powerful combination of aging tools and microsatellites will allow the PIs not only to constrain time scales of deep sea coral colonization, but also rates of recruitment and source of the colonizers. The results will provide significant insights into key ecological processes on seamounts, thus serving to inform further science as well as management. This proposal will support two STEM scientists in the early stages of their careers. It will also contribute to developing a competitive STEM workforce through training of two graduate students as well as undergraduate students as research internships. Besides the primary science, the PIs will also obtain samples and genetic data that will be made accessible to other researchers through museums and public databases, respectively.

弹性和恢复的相关概念提供了对生态系统功能，连通性和继承的见解。在海洋领域，大多数弹性研究都集中在浅水生态系统上，但是深海中的人为影响的增加正在研究深海关键时期的弹性和恢复，深海硬质栖息地以及最少受到关注的大规模干扰。具有讽刺意味的是，对海底的关键人为影响之一是鱼类拖网，为了解从大规模干扰中恢复的过程提供了实验设计。海山有很高比例的硬质栖息地，用于采样的谨慎位置，以及对鱼类拖网的广泛干扰，为研究弹性的恢复方面提供了出色的自然实验室。此外，海洋上的深海珊瑚的丰度，数值优势，高生物量和多样性使它们成为这些研究的理想模型生物体。该项目的目的是检查一系列位置，夏威夷岛西北部的一系列地点（NWHI）（NWHI）和Emperor Seamount Chain（ESEAMEANT CHACKIENT（ESEAMEALT）基于预测，并根据Propersienty的预测，预言，预言，预言，预言，预言，预言了预言， NWHI中的深海床层尽管在30多年前拖网终止了。为了检验这一假设，PI将使用自主和偏远的水下车辆在三个级别的鱼类拖网强度下调查一系列复制的海山，以进行调查和靶向采样，对海峡动物群，尤其是深海珊瑚进行采样。 PI将重点关注海山社区的三个特定方面：使用经过验证的尺寸时代曲线的社区结构，贵重珊瑚的年龄结构，以及使用DNA微卫星的珍贵珊瑚的遗传结构。使用这些方法，PI将能够预测以来最近殖民者的珊瑚殖民和源数量以来的时间。这些封口代表了自从建立独家经济区域以来附加时间的自然实验，并提供了无与伦比的机会来解决aremount恢复在衰老时间尺度上的恢复的机会。老化工具和微卫星的强大组合将使PI不仅可以限制深海珊瑚殖民的时间尺度，还可以限制募集速率和殖民者的来源。结果将为海洋上的关键生态过程提供重要的见解，从而为进一步的科学和管理提供了信息。该建议将在其职业生涯的早期阶段支持两名STEM科学家。这也将通过培训两名研究生以及本科生作为研究实习，从而有助于发展竞争性的STEM劳动力。除了主要科学外，PI还将获得其他研究人员通过博物馆和公共数据库访问的样本和遗传数据。