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  • 1
    Publication Date: 2015-10-22
    Description: Fecundity and reproductive potential are important factors to be considered in evaluating trajectories and demographic predictions of fish populations. Therefore, characterizing the nature and quantifying the extent of any reproductive failure should be considered in fisheries studies. Here, we describe morphological changes in developed ovaries of autumn-spawning herring ( Clupea harengus membras ) caught in the northern Baltic Sea and evaluate the magnitude of this phenomenon during 3 consecutive years. Visibly, abnormal ovaries were histologically characterized by irregular-shaped oocytes in a vitellogenic or final maturation stage with coagulative necrosis and liquefaction of the yolk sphere, degraded follicle membranes, and fibrinous adhesion among oocytes. Such degeneration is presumed to cause complete infertility in the fish. The frequency of fish with abnormal ovaries varied annually between 10 and 15% among all females sampled. However, specific sampling events showed up to 90% females with abnormal gonads. The specific cause of this abnormality remains unknown; however, prevalence was associated with unfavourable environmental conditions encountered before spawning. Thus, ovarian abnormality was positively related to water temperatures, with the highest level found at ≥15°C and negatively related to the frequency of strong winds. The frequency of occurrence of abnormal gonads decreased with the progression of spawning from August to October. The observed abnormality and associated spawning failure will negatively affect the realized fecundity of autumn herring in the Baltic Sea and may act as a limiting factor for recovery of the stock, which has experienced profound depression during the last three decades.
    Print ISSN: 1054-3139
    Electronic ISSN: 1095-9289
    Topics: Biology , Geosciences , Physics
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  • 2
    Publication Date: 2015-12-01
    Description: Coastal areas are among the most biologically productive aquatic systems worldwide, but face strong and variable anthropogenic pressures. Few studies have, however, addressed the temporal development of coastal ecosystems in an integrated context. This study represents an assessment of the development over time in 13 coastal ecosystems in the Baltic Sea region during the past two decades. The study covers between two to six trophic levels per system and time-series dating back to the early 1990s. We applied multivariate analyses to assess the temporal development of biological ecosystem components and relate these to potential driving variables associated with changes in climate, hydrology, nutrient status, and fishing pressure. Our results show that structural change often occurred with similar timing in the assessed coastal systems. Moreover, in 10 of the 13 systems, a directional development of the ecosystem components was observed. The variables representing key ecosystem components generally differed across systems, due to natural differences and limitation to available data. As a result of this, the correlation between the temporal development of the biological components in each area and the driving variables assessed was to some extent area-specific. However, change in nutrient status was a common denominator of the variables most often associated with changes in the assessed systems. Our results, additionally, indicate existing strengths as well as future challenges in the capacity of currently available monitoring data to support integrated assessments and the implementation of an integrated ecosystem-based approach to the management of the Baltic Sea coastal ecosystems.
    Print ISSN: 1054-3139
    Electronic ISSN: 1095-9289
    Topics: Biology , Geosciences , Physics
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  • 3
    Publication Date: 2016-06-04
    Description: Spatiotemporal patchiness of plankton and appropriate sampling strategy are crucial considerations for long-term studies of plankton dynamics, determining the confidence with which statistically significant ecological changes will be detected and attributed to the drivers. We analyze the spatiotemporal variability of Baltic Sea zooplankton using historical data from various monitoring programs. We determined the scales of highest temporal and spatial variability, focusing on distances and time periods shorter than 100 km and 90 days. Analyses were made for different hydrological regions (small lagoons, larger gulfs, Baltic Proper), and with differently sized zooplankton groups (large and small copepods and cladocerans). Temporal variability in one place usually exceeded the synoptic spatial variability. Smaller, faster reproducing cladocerans varied more in abundance than larger, slower reproducing copepods. The variability increased with time and distance between samples. For copepods, a temporal cycle of 60–70 days emerged, implying the need for sampling after every 20–23 days. For cladocerans, we propose 14 days as a sampling interval, the time during which the average abundance differences between samples doubled. In the future, these guidelines should be used in conjunction or as an addendum to HELCOM (Helsinki Commission) guidelines, to optimize the zooplankton sampling effort in the Baltic Sea.
    Print ISSN: 0142-7873
    Electronic ISSN: 1464-3774
    Topics: Biology
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  • 4
    Publication Date: 2016-06-24
    Description: There is an essentially circular interaction between the human social system and the marine ecosystem. The Oceans Past V Conference "Multidisciplinary perspectives on the history of human interactions with life in the ocean" held in Tallinn, Estonia, in May 2015 was an opportunity for the presentation and discussion of papers on a diverse array of topics that examined this socio-ecological system from a historical perspective. Here we provide background to the disciplines participating in the conference and to the conference itself. We summarize the conference papers that appear in this special volume of the ICES JMS and highlight issues which arose during general discussion. We make two conclusions. First, to have greater impact and ensure more efficient use of knowledge gained from marine historical ecology (MHE) and marine environmental history (MEH) in ecosystem-based management and related policy development, practitioners need to work more routinely with population and ecological modellers and statisticians. This will allow greater processing of the available historical data to derive ecologically meaningful properties that can then be used to assess the ecological impact of long-term changes of affected species and define appropriate and realistic management targets. Second, increased multi- and trans-disciplinary effort is required to better understand the relative importance of different human demographic, technological, economic, and cultural drivers on the patterns, intensities and trajectories of human activities affecting marine ecosystems.
    Print ISSN: 1054-3139
    Electronic ISSN: 1095-9289
    Topics: Biology , Geosciences , Physics
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