Speaker Christian Petitpas & Jefferson Turner Mass. Division of Marine Fisheries & UMass. Dartmouth
Abstract:
In collaboration with a team of scientists from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS) and Wellesley College, UMass Dartmouth professor Jefferson Turner and his former student Christian Petitpas of the Biology Department and SMAST, and subsequently of the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries, participated in three research cruises in May of 2018, and June and July of 2019. These studies, funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), were to investigate plankton productivity and ecology near the continental shelf break south of New England. This area has long been known for intermittent pulses of high plankton productivity and rich ecosystems, including enhanced levels of fish, seabirds, and marine mammals. The overall hypotheses for our studies were that (1) offshore water, partly from the Gulf Stream, upwelled northward over the continental slope and shelf, bringing nutrients (nitrate and phosphate) upward into the euphotic zone, thereby enriching productivity at the shelf break, and (2) disappearance of such productivity pulses was possibly due to zooplankton grazing or other factors. As required for NSF funding, there had to be substantial public outreach components from such studies. Accordingly, our cruises included a professional movie-making team to document the studies on these cruises, while the cruises were underway. In this seminar, we will show the two short movies that resulted from such efforts, and then Chrissy Petitpas will present a short summary of results thus far from the zooplankton grazing studies. Jefferson Turner will then present a short summary of results thus far from the studies of abundance and composition of zooplankton communities in relation to hydrography and oceanographic parameters from concurrent studies by physical oceanographers and other members of our team from WHOI, VIMS and Wellesley.
Zoom credentials
Meeting ID: 957 7440 7096
Passcode: 448916
SENG 115 & virtual
Professor Jeff Turner
508 999-8208
jturner@umassd.edu
https://umassd.zoom.us/j/95774407096?pwd=DymdCactCm4CPcv0O0uxq2KJ1yIwpg.1