scholarly journals First record of the European Giant File Clam, Acesta excavata (Bivalvia: Pectinoidea: Limidae), in the Northwest Atlantic

2003 ◽  
Vol 117 (3) ◽  
pp. 440 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean-Marc Gagnon ◽  
Richard L. Haedrich

Two large bivalve specimens collected in Bay d’Espoir, a deep fjord situated on the south coast of Newfoundland, are described and identified as belonging to the species Acesta excavata (Fabricius 1779). In situ observations onboard the manned submersible PISCES IV and color videos have provided information on the vertical distribution, density and habitat of the species. Maximum abundances of about 15 large individuals/m2 occurred on sheltered rock outcrops at depth ranging from 550 to 775 m, where warm (6°C) continental slope water is found. Differences in shape and thickness between the valves of the two specimens appear to be related to the degree of exposure to rock falls (i.e., sheltered versus exposed habitat). Prior to this account, the European Giant File Clam had never been encountered west of the Azores Islands in the North Atlantic.

Zootaxa ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 4766 (2) ◽  
pp. 201-260 ◽  
Author(s):  
CHRISTOPHER L. MAH

Exploratory cruises by the NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer have resulted in a substantial contribution in our understanding of deep-sea echinoderm biodiversity, biology, and ecology in the North Atlantic. This includes the description and in situ feeding observations of two, new corallivorous goniasterid species, Evoplosoma nizinskiae n. sp. and Sibogaster bathyheuretor n. sp. Significant in situ observations include a synchronous feeding event including multiple goniasterid asteroids and a cidaroid urchin on a large demosponge, providing new data for understanding echinoderm feeding behavior, including agonistic behavior, in deep-sea settings and new, in situ feeding observations for 28 deep-sea species including the myxasterid Pythonaster atlantidis, the korethrasterid Remaster palmatus and the poorly understood hippasterine goniasterids, Gilbertaster caribaea and Sthenaster emmae. 


1997 ◽  
Vol 102 (D9) ◽  
pp. 10739-10750 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. Schlager ◽  
P. Konopka ◽  
P. Schulte ◽  
U. Schumann ◽  
H. Ziereis ◽  
...  

2008 ◽  
Vol 65 (3) ◽  
pp. 433-442 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lars Stemmann ◽  
Marsh Youngbluth ◽  
Kevin Robert ◽  
Aino Hosia ◽  
Marc Picheral ◽  
...  

Abstract Stemmann, L., Youngbluth, M., Robert, K., Hosia, A., Picheral, M., Paterson, H., Ibanez, F., Guidi, L., Lombard, F., and Gorsky, G. 2008. Global zoogeography of fragile macrozooplankton in the upper 100–1000 m inferred from the underwater video profiler. – ICES Journal of Marine Science, 65: 433–442. Mesopelagic gelatinous zooplankton fauna are insufficiently known because of inappropriate and infrequent sampling, but may have important trophic roles. In situ imaging systems and undersea vehicles have been used to investigate their diversity, distribution, and abundance. The use of different platforms, however, restricts the comparison of data from different regions. Starting in 2001, the underwater video profiler (UVP) was deployed during 12 cruises in six oceanic regimes (Mediterranean Sea, North Atlantic shelves, Mid-Atlantic Ridge, tropical Pacific Ocean, eastern Indian Ocean, and Subantarctic Ocean) to determine the vertical distribution of organisms in the upper 1000 m. Nine oceanic regions were identified based on the hydrological properties of the water column. They correspond to nine of the biogeochemical provinces defined by Longhurst. In all, 21 morphotypes were recognized: sarcodines (eight groups), ctenophores (two groups), siphonophores, medusae (five groups), crustaceans (one group), chaetognaths, appendicularians, salps, and fish. The similarity in the community assemblages of zooplankton in the 100–1000 m layer was significantly greater within regions than between regions, in most cases. The regions with comparable composition were located in the North Atlantic with adjacent water masses, suggesting that the assemblages were either mixed by advective transport or that environmental conditions were similar in mesopelagic layers. The data suggest that the spatial structuring of mesopelagic macrozooplankton occurs on large scales (e.g. basin scales) but not necessarily on smaller scales (e.g. oceanic front).


2020 ◽  
Vol 50 (8) ◽  
pp. 2393-2414
Author(s):  
Atousa Saberi ◽  
Thomas W. N. Haine ◽  
Renske Gelderloos ◽  
M. Femke de Jong ◽  
Heather Furey ◽  
...  

AbstractThe Denmark Strait Overflow (DSO) is an important contributor to the lower limb of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC). Determining DSO formation and its pathways is not only important for local oceanography but also critical to estimating the state and variability of the AMOC. Despite prior attempts to understand the DSO sources, its upstream pathways and circulation remain uncertain due to short-term (3–5 days) variability. This makes it challenging to study the DSO from observations. Given this complexity, this study maps the upstream pathways and along-pathway changes in its water properties, using Lagrangian backtracking of the DSO sources in a realistic numerical ocean simulation. The Lagrangian pathways confirm that several branches contribute to the DSO from the north such as the East Greenland Current (EGC), the separated EGC (sEGC), and the North Icelandic Jet (NIJ). Moreover, the model results reveal additional pathways from south of Iceland, which supplied over 16% of the DSO annually and over 25% of the DSO during winter of 2008, when the NAO index was positive. The southern contribution is about 34% by the end of March. The southern pathways mark a more direct route from the near-surface subpolar North Atlantic to the North Atlantic Deep Water (NADW), and needs to be explored further, with in situ observations.


2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (13) ◽  
pp. 8157-8179 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas Petzold ◽  
Patrick Neis ◽  
Mihal Rütimann ◽  
Susanne Rohs ◽  
Florian Berkes ◽  
...  

Abstract. The vertical distribution and seasonal variation of water vapour volume mixing ratio (H2O VMR), of relative humidity with respect to ice (RHice) and particularly of regions with ice-supersaturated air masses (ISSRs) in the extratropical upper troposphere and lowermost stratosphere are investigated at northern mid-latitudes over the eastern North American, North Atlantic and European regions for the period 1995 to 2010. Observation data originate from regular and continuous long-term measurements on board instrumented passenger aircraft in the framework of the European research programme MOZAIC (1994–2010), which continues as the European research infrastructure IAGOS (from 2011). Data used in our study result from collocated observations of O3 VMR, RHice and temperature, as well as H2O VMR deduced from RHice and temperature data. The in situ observations of H2O VMR and RHice with a vertical resolution of 30 hPa (< 750 m at the extratropical tropopause level) and a horizontal resolution of 1 km resolve detailed features of the distribution of water vapour and ice-supersaturated air relative to the thermal tropopause, including their seasonal and regional variability and chemical signatures at various distances from the tropopause layer. Annual cycles of the investigated properties document the highest H2O VMR and temperatures above the thermal tropopause in the summer months, whereas RHice above the thermal tropopause remains almost constant in the course of the year. Over all investigated regions, upper tropospheric air masses close to the tropopause level are nearly saturated with respect to ice and contain a significant fraction of ISSRs with a distinct seasonal cycle of minimum values in summer (30 % over the ocean, 20 %–25 % over land) and maximum values in late winter (35 %–40 % over both land and ocean). Above the thermal tropopause, ISSRs are occasionally observed with an occurrence probability of 1.5 ± 1.1 %, whereas above the dynamical tropopause at 2 PVU (PVU: potential vorticity unit), the occurrence probability increases 4-fold to 8.4 ± 4.4 %. In both coordinate systems related to tropopause height (TPH), the ISSR occurrence probabilities drop to values below 1 % for the next higher air mass layer with pressure levels p < pTPH−15 hPa. For both tropopause definitions, the tropospheric nature or fingerprint, based on O3 VMR, indicates the continuing tropospheric influence on ISSRs inside and above the respective tropopause layer. For the non-ISSRs, however, the stratospheric nature is clearly visible above the thermal tropopause, whereas above the dynamical tropopause the air masses show a still substantial tropospheric influence. For all three regions, seasonal deviations from the long-term annual cycle of ISSR occurrence show no significant trends over the observation period of 15 years, whereas a statistically significant correlation between the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) index and the deviation of ISSR occurrence from the long-term average is observed for the North Atlantic region but not for the eastern North American and European regions.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas Petzold ◽  
Patrick Neis ◽  
Mihal Rütimann ◽  
Susanne Rohs ◽  
Florian Berkes ◽  
...  

Abstract. The vertical distribution and seasonal variation of upper tropospheric humidity (UTH) and particularly of ice-supersaturated air masses in the extratropical upper troposphere and lowermost stratosphere (Ex-UTLS) is investigated at northern mid-latitudes over the regions Eastern North America, the North Atlantic and Europe for the period 1995 to 2010. Observation data originate from regular and continuous long-term measurements of water vapour volume mixing ratio (H2O VMR), temperature and relative humidity with respect to ice (RHice) by instrumented passenger aircraft in the framework of the European research program MOZAIC (1994–2010) which is continued as European research infrastructure IAGOS (from 2011). The in-situ observations of UTH with a vertical resolution of 30 hPa (


2015 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Mel Cosentino

Orcinus orcais a cosmopolitan species and the most widely distributed marine mammal. Its diet includes over 140 species of fish, cephalopods, sea birds and marine mammals. However, many populations are specialised on certain specific prey items. Three genetically distinct populations have been described in the North Atlantic. Population A (that includes the Icelandic and Norwegian sub-populations) is believed to be piscivorous, as is population C, which includes fish-eating killer whales from the Strait of Gibraltar. In contrast, population B feeds on both fish and marine mammals. Norwegian killer whales follow the Norwegian spring spawning herring stock. The only description in the literature of Norwegian killer whales feeding on another cetacean species is a predation event on northern bottlenose whales in 1968. Daily land-based surveys targeting sperm whales were conducted from the Andenes lighthouse using BigEyes®binoculars (25×, 80 mm). The location of animals at sea was approximated through the use of an internal reticule system and a graduated wheel. On 24 June 2012 at 3:12 am, an opportunistic sighting of 11 killer whales was made off Andenes harbour. The whales hunted and fed on a harbour porpoise. Despite these species having overlapping distributions in Norwegian waters, this is the first predatory event reported in the literature.


Polar Biology ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philipp Neitzel ◽  
Aino Hosia ◽  
Uwe Piatkowski ◽  
Henk-Jan Hoving

AbstractObservations of the diversity, distribution and abundance of pelagic fauna are absent for many ocean regions in the Atlantic, but baseline data are required to detect changes in communities as a result of climate change. Gelatinous fauna are increasingly recognized as vital players in oceanic food webs, but sampling these delicate organisms in nets is challenging. Underwater (in situ) observations have provided unprecedented insights into mesopelagic communities in particular for abundance and distribution of gelatinous fauna. In September 2018, we performed horizontal video transects (50–1200 m) using the pelagic in situ observation system during a research cruise in the southern Norwegian Sea. Annotation of the video recordings resulted in 12 abundant and 7 rare taxa. Chaetognaths, the trachymedusaAglantha digitaleand appendicularians were the three most abundant taxa. The high numbers of fishes and crustaceans in the upper 100 m was likely the result of vertical migration. Gelatinous zooplankton included ctenophores (lobate ctenophores,Beroespp.,Euplokamissp., and an undescribed cydippid) as well as calycophoran and physonect siphonophores. We discuss the distributions of these fauna, some of which represent the first record for the Norwegian Sea.


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