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Influence of Vegetation Coverage on Dissolved Oxygen Concentration in Seagrass Bed in the Seto Inland Sea: Possible Effects on Fish Nursery Function

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Abstract

Hypoxic conditions can affect marine resource populations through lethal and non-lethal damage to marine life. The seagrass Zostera marina beds provide high ecosystem services, such as carbon fixation through photosynthesis and fish nursery functions. However, the respiration of seagrass at night is expected to increase in proportion to its biomass per unit area. The hypothesis that decreases in dissolved oxygen (DO) concentration affect fish community was tested in a temperate seagrass bed. The number of species, abundance, and biomass of fish in summer were lower at the site with a higher seagrass shoot density (85 shoots m−2) than that with a lower density (23 shoots m−2). The higher density site showed DO concentrations < 4 mg L−1 every day in summer. Model analysis revealed that tidal level, tidal range, day/night, and the time of day were important factors influencing the variation in the DO concentration and that the degree of influence varied by season and seagrass density. A laboratory experiment demonstrated that the survival of the most dominant fish species in the seagrass bed in summer, the juvenile black rockfish Sebastes cheni, for 10–60 min was reduced as the oxygen concentration decreased from 4 to 2 mg L−1. High seagrass shoot density was suggested to have negative effects on fish communities through a decrease in DO concentration in summer. These results provide evidence that the nursery role, one of the important components of the ecological functions of seagrass beds, does not always increase in proportion to vegetation coverage.

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The raw data supporting the conclusions of this manuscript will be made available by the authors, without undue reservation, to any qualified researcher.

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Acknowledgements

We are deeply grateful to the anonymous reviewers for comments on earlier version of the manuscript. We also thank Koji Hirakawa, Hiroshima Prefecture Sea-farming Center, and Hiroshi Ohashi, Greenpia Setouchi, Ryusei Shigemoto, Akito Inoue, Yuji Terada, Koji Fujita, and Sadaharu Iwasaki, Hiroshima University, for their support in field sampling and laboratory experiments.

Funding

This study was partly supported by Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (16H04971).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Graduate School of Integrated Sciences for Life, Hiroshima University, 1-4-4 Kagamiyama, Higashi-Hiroshima, Hiroshima, 739-8528, Japan

    Jun Shoji & Takeshi Tomiyama

  2. Department of Marine Science and Technology, Fukui Prefectural University, Obama, Fukui, 917-0003, Japan

    Jun Shoji

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  1. Jun Shoji
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  2. Takeshi Tomiyama
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J.S. designed the research; J.S. and T. T. performed analyses and wrote the paper.

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Correspondence to Jun Shoji.

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Communicated by Nathan Waltham

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Shoji, J., Tomiyama, T. Influence of Vegetation Coverage on Dissolved Oxygen Concentration in Seagrass Bed in the Seto Inland Sea: Possible Effects on Fish Nursery Function. Estuaries and Coasts 46, 1098–1109 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12237-023-01205-x

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