Collaborative Research: Food Limitation in the Deep Sea: A Test of a Paradigm using Long Time-Series Photographic Monitoring with Real-Time data Acquisition

斯克里普斯海洋研究所和伍兹霍尔海洋研究所的研究人员将在一个项目上合作，以解决海洋生态学中的一个主要范式：来自中上层的食物供应和深海底栖群落动态之间的耦合。如果没有适当的长时间序列测量，就很难建立这种耦合，而这种耦合又受到数据存储容量、操作仪器的电池电量的寿命、无法实时收集/分析数据和改变采样频率以及无法实时纠正或补偿故障的限制。PIS将通过利用北太平洋中部5000米深的夏威夷-2号天文台(H20)建立一个长期的海底观测点。H2O是一个原型海底观测系统，通过水下电话电缆从岸上提供电力并进行实时数据采集和控制，使深海的长期监测成为可能。通过在H2O中插入一套传感器，PI将研究在深海底栖群落中随时间变化的食物供应的短期和长期重要性。将讨论以下问题：1)作为北太平洋中央涡旋的代表，到达H20站点海底的下沉颗粒物的质量和数量是什么？2)作为底栖群落活动的指标，到达海底的颗粒物的质量和数量在从几小时到几年的时间尺度上引起了什么反应？将安装一个由沉淀物传感器和数字延时相机组成的监测系统，以实时监测H20场址两个20平方米海底区域内的颗粒物质通量和底栖大型动物的活动。将把流向海底的颗粒通量的时间变化与复制照相区内可移动的底栖大型动物的丰富度和活动度进行比较。一项为期一年的实时数据采集和分析测试，结合改变岸边采样频率的能力，将首次对深海海底进行长期生态监测，以解决食物限制对深海底栖群落的重要性。

Investigators at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution will collaborate on a project to tackle a major paradigm in marine ecology: the coupling between a pelagically-derived food supply and the dynamics of deep-sea benthic communities. This coupling has been difficult to establish without appropriate long time-series measurements, which in turn have been limited by data storage capacity, longevity of battery power to operate instrumentation, the inability to collect/analyze data and alter sampling frequencies in real time, and the inability to correct or compensate for malfunctions in real time. The PIs will establish a long-term seafloor observing site by tapping into the Hawaii-2 Observatory (H20) at 5000 m depth in the central North Pacific. H2O is a prototype seafloor observing system that has made long-term monitoring possible in the deep sea, by providing electrical power from shore with real-time data acquisition and control via an underwater telephone cable. By plugging a suite of sensors into H2O, the PIs will study the short and long-term importance of a temporally-varying food supply on an abyssal benthic community. The following questions will be afddressed: 1) What is the quality and quantity of sinking particulate matter reaching the sea floor at the H20 site as representative of the North Pacific central gyre? 2) What responses are elicited in the epibenthic megafauna, as a proxy for benthic community activity, by the quality and quantity of particulate matter arriving on the sea floor on time scales from hours to years? A monitoring system will be attached consisting of a sedimentation sensor and digital time-lapse cameras, to monitor the flux of particulate matter as well as the activity of epibenthic megafauna in two 20m2 areas of the sea floor at the H20 site in real-time. Temporal changes in particle flux to the sea floor will be compared with the abundance and activity of the mobile epibenthic megafauna in the replicate photographic areas. A one-year test with real-time data acquisition and analyses combined with the ability to alter sampling frequencies from shore will provide the first long-term ecological monitoring of the abyssal sea floor to resolve the importance of food limitation on deep-sea benthic communities.