The global contribution of diel and seasonal vertical migrants to the biological carbon pump
Jerome Pinti, University of Delaware, jpinti@udel.edu (Presenter)
Tim DeVries, University of California, Santa Barbara, tdevries@geog.ucsb.edu
Tommy Norin, Technical University of Denmark, tnor@aqua.dtu.dk
Camila Serra-Pompei, MIT, camsp@mit.edu
Roland Proud, University of St Andrews, rp43@st-andrews.ac.uk
David Siegel, UC Santa Barbara, davey@eri.ucsb.edu
Thomas Kiørboe, Technical University of Denmark, tk@aqua.dtu.dk
Colleen Petrik, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, colleenpetrik@gmail.com
Ken Haste Anderson, Technical University of Denmark, kha@aqua.dtu.dk
Andrew Brierley, University of St Andrews, asb4@st-andrews.ac.uk
Nicholas Record, Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences, nrecord@bigelow.org
Sigrún Jónasdóttir, Technical University of Denmark, sjo@aqua.dtu.dk
André Visser, Technical University of Denmark, awv@aqua.dtu.dk
Many marine organisms perform vertical migrations, as they seek to balance their feeding opportunities and predation risk. Metazoans from zooplankton to fish perform diel vertical migrations (DVM), typically spending the day at depth hiding from visual predation, before ascending to the surface to feed at night. Copepods, especially in polar regions, perform seasonal vertical migrations (SVM), diapausing at depth during unfavorable months before migrating back to the surface when food becomes abundant. These two vertical migrations (daily and seasonal) actively transport organic carbon from the ocean surface to the depth, contributing to the biological carbon pump.
Here, we provide estimates of carbon export (the flux of carbon from the surface to the depths) and carbon sequestration (the amount of carbon stored in the ocean’s interior) mediated by these vertical migrations. For DVM, we use a game-theoretic food-web model to simulate diel vertical migrations and estimate near-global (global ocean minus coastal areas and high latitudes) carbon fluxes and sequestration by fish and zooplankton due to respiration, fecal pellets, and deadfalls. For SVM, we focus on five species of copepods and rely on observed distribution and abundance to compute carbon injected at depth during diapause. We then couple our results to a global ocean circulation model to estimate carbon sequestration mediated by both processes.
While the export production of metazoans is modest (~20% of global total), we estimate that their contribution to carbon sequestered by the biological pump (~800 PgC) is conservatively more than 50% of the estimated global total (~1300 PgC) and that they have a significantly longer sequestration timescale (~250 years in the case of DVM, ~150-750 years for SVM) than previously reported for other components of the biological pump. Fish and mesopelagic fish in particular appear to contribute significantly to global carbon sequestration.
Poster Location ID: 3-37
Presentation Type: Poster
Session: Poster Session 3
Session Date: Thu (May 11) 3:00-5:00 PM
CCE Program: OBB