Mesoscale eddies release pelagic sharks from thermal constraints to foraging in the ocean twilight zone

Author Posting. © National Academy of Sciences, 2019. This article is posted here by permission of National Academy of Sciences for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 116 (35), (2019): 17187-17192, doi:10.1073/pnas.1903067116.Mesoscale eddies are critical components of the ocean’s “internal weather” system. Mixing and stirring by eddies exerts significant control on biogeochemical fluxes in the open ocean, and eddies may trap distinctive plankton communities that remain coherent for months and can be transported hundreds to thousands of kilometers. Debate regarding how and why predators use fronts and eddies, for example as a migratory cue, enhanced forage opportunities, or preferred thermal habitat, has been ongoing since the 1950s. The influence of eddies on the behavior of large pelagic fishes, however, remains largely unexplored. Here, we reconstruct movements of a pelagic predator, the blue shark (Prionace glauca), in the Gulf Stream region using electronic tags, earth-observing satellites, and data-assimilating ocean forecasting models. Based on >2,000 tracking days and nearly 500,000 high-resolution time series measurements collected by 15 instrumented individuals, we show that blue sharks seek out the interiors of anticyclonic eddies where they dive deep while foraging. Our observations counter the existing paradigm that anticyclonic eddies are unproductive ocean “deserts” and suggest anomalously warm temperatures in these features connect surface-oriented predators to the most abundant fish community on the planet in the mesopelagic. These results also shed light on the ecosystem services provided by mesopelagic prey. Careful consideration will be needed before biomass extraction from the ocean twilight zone to avoid interrupting a key link between planktonic production and top predators. Moreover, robust associations between targeted fish species and oceanographic features increase the prospects for effective dynamic ocean management.We thank D. McGillicuddy, G. Lawson, and G. Flierl for helpful discussions while developing this work and 2 anonymous reviewers whose feedback significantly improved the manuscript. We also thank C. Fischer and the OCEARCH team for their support of this research. This work was funded by awards to C.D.B. from the Martin Family Society of Fellows for Sustainability Fellowship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; the Grassle Fellowship and Ocean Venture Fund at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution; and the National Aeronatics and Space Administration (NASA) Earth and Space Science Fellowship. C.D.B. and P.G. acknowledge support from the NASA New Investigator Program Award 80NSSC18K0757, and P.G. acknowledges support from NSF Award OCE-1558809. This research is partially supported by funding to S.R.T. as part of the Audacious Project, a collaborative endeavor, housed at TED. We thank donors to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) ProjectWHOI crowdfunding campaign: The Secret Lives of Sharks. Computational support was provided by the Amazon Web Services Cloud Credits for Research program. Funding for the development of HYCOM has been provided by the National Ocean Partnership Program and the Office of Naval Research.2020-02-0