marine aggregates and their importance as a food source to bentic suspension-feeders

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There are many types of marine animals that live on the ocean floor in shallow coastal areas and rely on particles suspended in the water column as a food source. These bottom, or benthic, animals are important members of the local ecosystem because they filter particles floating in the water column, both living organisms and non-living particles such as sediments. They capture a variety of dilute particles in the water column and convert them into flesh. They in turn are often eaten by others, including man, making some of them important members of food chains and the basis for local fisheries and aquaculture operations. The proposed research looks to provide a better understanding as to which environmental factors, in particular the number and type of suspended food particles, influence the uptake of food energy and conversion to body tissue.  This is important to know because growth rates will determine how quickly individuals are recruited to a  fishery or how rapidly they can be harvested from an aquaculture site. Some of these particles are known to stick together and form larger aggregates or marine snow. These aggregates are very fragile in nature  making them difficult to sample and we really do not know much about their  nutritional value as a food sources or in fact whether most benthic animals can capture or eat them. It has long been thought that these suspended aggregates represent an important link in the flow of energy from the water column to the bottom and on to other levels of the food chains, however there is little experimental evidence to support this.  These particles could represent a major  food supply to the bottom of the ocean and have significant impacts on feeding strategies, growth rates and reproductive cycles of benthic species. The objectives of this proposal will be to assess the characteristics of fragile marine snow in the local Bay of Fundy habitats where I will be studying the ability of local benthic species to capture and eat this little known food source.