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Variation in the diet of Arctic Cod (Boreogadus saida) in the Pacific Arctic and Bering Sea

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Abstract

Arctic cod, Boreogadus saida (Lepechin, 1774), is a nodal species in Arctic marine foodwebs as an important prey of many birds, marine mammals, and other fishes, as well as an abundant predator of zooplankton and epibenthic fauna. We examined the summer diet of Arctic cod across a latitudinal gradient extending from the southern limit of their distribution in the eastern Bering Sea to the northern margins of the eastern Chukchi Sea (ECS) continental shelf. Specimens were collected from demersal and pelagic trawls conducted between 1999 and 2012, and across a range of predator sizes (3–26 cm). Arctic cod diets vary with body size and between regions within the study area, and appear to vary between years in the eastern Bering Sea, indicating opportunistic feeding habits. Constrained Analysis of Principal Coordinates was conducted on ECS demersal samples and revealed consumption of fish and decapod crustacea were positively correlated with Arctic cod length while consumption of euphausiids and copepods had the opposite relationship. The demersal Arctic cod diet in the northern latitudes of the ECS was dominated by copepod consumption (47% by weight, %W), but copepods were less important (12–26%W) in the central and southern latitudes of the ECS and in the northern and eastern Bering Sea—areas where diets were more varied in their composition. High levels of variation in the diet of Arctic cod highlights the need to monitor Arctic cod diets to identify consistently dominant prey types and potential future changes to trophic relationships related to climate change or increasing anthropogenic activity.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Richard Hibpshman and Sean Rohan of the University of Washington for their assistance with laboratory analysis, Geoff Lang and Angie Greig (NOAA) for data management and technical support, and Robert Lauth (NOAA) for generating size-specific CPUE data from the northern Bering and eastern Chukchi Seas. We are grateful to all Arctic Eis participants who helped with sample collection. We would also like to extend our thanks to the Captains and crews of the F/V Alaska Knight and the F/V Bristol Explorer for their efforts in support of this work. A portion of this work was conducted as part of the Arctic Ecosystem Integrated Survey (Arctic Eis) and was funded [in part] by the U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) through Cooperative Agreement M12PG00018 between BOEM, Alaska Outer Continental Shelf Region and the Alaska Fisheries Science Center. The findings and conclusions in the paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the National Marine Fisheries Service. This publication is [partially] funded by the Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean (JISAO) under NOAA Cooperative Agreement No. NA10OAR4320148, Contribution No. 2705.

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  1. Resource Ecology and Fisheries Management Division, Alaska Fisheries Science Center, National Marine Fisheries Service, 7600 Sand Point Way N.E., Seattle, WA, 98115, USA

    Troy W. Buckley

  2. Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean, University of Washington, Box 354925, Seattle, WA, 98195, USA

    George A. Whitehouse

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Buckley, T.W., Whitehouse, G.A. Variation in the diet of Arctic Cod (Boreogadus saida) in the Pacific Arctic and Bering Sea. Environ Biol Fish 100, 421–442 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10641-016-0562-1

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