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The swimming crab Charybdis smithii: distribution, biology and trophic role in the pelagic ecosystem of the western Indian Ocean

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Abstract

Surface “swarms” of the swimming crabs Charybdis smithii are still considered as an unusual phenomenon in the open Indian Ocean, although their dense pelagic aggregations were already reported in waters off the Indian coast and in the northern Arabian Sea. Based on an extensive large-scale data series taken over 45 years, we demonstrate that C. smithii is common in the pelagic provinces of the western Indian Ocean driven by the wind monsoon regime. Swimming crabs are dispersed by the monsoon currents throughout the equatorial Indian Ocean. They aggregate at night in the upper 150-m layer, where their estimated biomass derived from pelagic trawling data can exceed 130 kg km−2. Abundance of C. smithii can reach >15,000 ind. km−2 in July (i.e. the peak of the south-west monsoon), declines by 50-fold in March and is negligible in May. C. smithii is an important prey for more than 30 species of abundant epipelagic top predators. In turn, it feeds on mesopelagic species. This swimming crab is a major species of the intermediate trophic levels and represents a crucial seasonal trophic link in the open ocean ecosystem of the western Indian Ocean. Outbursts in pelagic waters of huge biomasses of ordinarily benthic crustaceans (C. smithii and Natosquilla investigatoris) are a remarkable feature of the Indian Ocean, although similar, but smaller, events are reported in the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans.

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Notes

  1. YugNIRO—Southern Scientific Research Institute of Marine Fisheries & Oceanography, Kerch, Crimea, Ukraine.

  2. Exploratory cruises were arranged by auxiliary organization, which carried out fisheries research under general auspice of YugNIRO: former Department of Searching and Scientific Research Fleet at the Southern Basin of Ministry of Fisheries of the USSR (Yugrybpromrazvedka) (till 1988). Starting from 1993 operated as fishing company. Terminated its activity in 2004–2006.

  3. IRD—Institut de Recherche pour le Développement, France.

  4. Korzun (2006) Personal communication. YugNIRO, 2, Sverdlov Str., 98300, Kerch, Crimea, Ukraine. e-mail: korzuny@mail.ru.

  5. Data source: Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies, The Florida State University, http://www.coaps.fsu.edu/woce/html/ndnwinds.htm.

  6. ICOADS data provided by the NOAA/OAR/ESRL PSD, Boulder, CO, USA, from their web site at http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/.

  7. Sample size is low, n < 30 ind. (Table 4).

  8. Taquet (2008) Personal communication. IFREMER, CRH, Av. Jean Monnet, BP 171, 34203 Sète Cedex, France. e-mail: marc.taquet@ifremer.fr

  9. Deceased in 2000.

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Acknowledgments

This work, a part of the THETIS program of the IRD (Institut de Recherche pour le Développement), is also supported by the BIOPS project funded by Institut Français de la Biodiversité (no. CD-AOOI-07-013). The authors gratefully thank the Seychelles Fishing Authority (SFA), and the crews of the longliners “Amitié” and “Cap Morgane” for helping us to collect the samples. We would like to acknowledge the enormous contribution of YugNIRO scientists in the long-term sampling of data in the Indian Ocean and the development of the databases used in this paper. One of the authors (Evgeny Romanov) was a member of that research team in 1985–2005. Databases for the SIOTLLRP were created within the framework of the data rescue project developed between YugNIRO and US National Marine Fisheries Service (US NMFS) supported though a grant from NFWF: NOAA Award No. NA87AC0200. We are thankful to Anna Kornilova, who made available for analysis paper archive of stomach contents data for Indian Ocean top predators developed by her mother, Soviet scientist Galina N. KornilovaFootnote 9 who worked in the YugNIRO from 1958 to 1990. We are indebted to Natalya Romanova for her database management and programming efforts, input of primary data of G. Kornilova and V. Zamorov and for her patience with our numerous requests for data. We are thankful to Dr. Walther W. Kühnhold (vTI, Germany) for his extremely valuable help in obtaining important publications on biology of C. smithii. Our thanks to Hervé Demarcq and Francis Marsac for assistance in processing netCDF climatic data. Critics and suggestions of three anonymous reviewers greatly improved manuscript clarity. Elise Bradbury and David Kaplan provided assistance with the English of the manuscript. Pierre Lopez polished maps and provided advice with graphic work.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. CRH (Centre de Recherche Halieutique Méditerranéenne et Tropicale), IRD (Institut de Recherche pour le Développement), UR 109 Thetis, BP 171, 34203, Sète Cedex, France

    Evgeny Romanov & Frédéric Ménard

  2. IRD, UR 109 Thetis, BP 172, 97492, Ste Clotilde Cedex, La Réunion, France

    Michel Potier

  3. I.I. Mechnikov Odessa National University (ONU), 2, Dvoryanskaya St., 65000, Odessa, Ukraine

    Veniamin Zamorov

Authors
  1. Evgeny Romanov
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  2. Michel Potier
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  3. Veniamin Zamorov
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  4. Frédéric Ménard
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Correspondence to Evgeny Romanov.

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Communicated by X. Irigoien.

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Romanov, E., Potier, M., Zamorov, V. et al. The swimming crab Charybdis smithii: distribution, biology and trophic role in the pelagic ecosystem of the western Indian Ocean. Mar Biol 156, 1089–1107 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00227-009-1151-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00227-009-1151-z

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