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: 1334675
• 负责人: Erin Roark
• 金额: $ 26.3万
• 依托单位: Texas A&M 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=1334675&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.

复原力和相关的恢复概念提供了对生态系统功能、连通性和演替的见解。在海洋领域，大多数复原力研究都侧重于浅水生态系统，但深海的人类影响日益增加，使深海复原力和恢复研究的时间紧迫，而深海硬基质生境和大规模扰动受到的关注最少。具有讽刺意味的是，对海底的主要人为影响之一，拖网捕鱼，提供了一个实验设计，以了解从大规模扰动中恢复的过程。海山有很高比例的硬基质生境，取样地点不显眼，拖网捕鱼造成的干扰很大，为研究复原力的恢复方面提供了极好的天然实验室。此外，海山上深海珊瑚的丰富性、数量优势、高生物量和多样性使它们成为这些研究的理想模式生物，本项目的目标是考察夏威夷西北群岛和皇帝海山链的一系列地点，根据对受干扰海山的低复原力和十年恢复时间的预测，尽管30多年前拖网捕捞已经结束，但西北大西洋渔业局的深海珊瑚床仍未恢复。为检验这一假设，项目研究员将在三个拖网捕鱼强度水平上对一系列复制海山进行调查，使用自动遥控潜水器对海山动物群，特别是深海珊瑚进行调查和有针对性的取样。初步研究将侧重于海山群落的三个具体方面：群落结构、利用经核实的大小-年龄曲线确定的珍贵珊瑚的年龄结构，以及利用DNA微卫星确定的珍贵珊瑚的遗传结构。利用这些方法，研究员将能够预测珊瑚在任何特定海山定居以来的时间以及最近定居者的来源种群，这些海山是专属经济区建立以来加上时间因素的自然实验，为在十年时间尺度上处理海山恢复问题提供了前所未有的机会。老化工具和微卫星的强大组合将使PI不仅能够限制深海珊瑚殖民的时间尺度，而且还可以限制殖民者的招募和来源。研究结果将为了解海山的关键生态过程提供重要见解，从而为进一步的科学和管理提供信息。该提案将支持两名STEM科学家在其职业生涯的早期阶段。它还将通过培训两名研究生和本科生作为研究实习生，为培养一支有竞争力的STEM劳动力做出贡献。除了基础科学，PI还将获得样本和遗传数据，这些数据将分别通过博物馆和公共数据库提供给其他研究人员。