Abundance and distribution of early life stages of krill around Iceland during spring

ABSTRACT

Abundance, distribution and development of early life stages of krill (eggs, nauplii, calyptopes and furciliae) around Iceland were studied during the latter half of May 2013. Multivariate analyses were used to examine the relationships between water mass characteristics and phytoplankton spring bloom dynamics and distribution of krill. The results show that krill eggs, nauplii and calyptopes were most abundant over the shelf edges off the southwest and east coasts, while furciliae were most abundant on the shelf off the southwest coast. Meganyctiphanes norvegica and Thysanoessa longicaudata larvae were found mainly in the southwest, while T. inermis larvae were found in highest numbers on the east coast. Redundancy analysis showed that phytoplankton biomass, temperature and bottom depth explained 41% of the distribution pattern of early ontogenetic krill stages. In areas where krill eggs and larvae were most abundant (off the southwest coast), the phytoplankton spring bloom was in an advanced state, and the phytoplankton biomass and temperature were particularly high.

RESPONSIBLE EDITOR:

• Tone Falkenhaug

KEYWORDS:

• Krill
• eggs
• larvae
• distribution
• Icelandic waters

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the crew of the RV Bjarni Sæmundsson and colleagues at MRI for support during the cruise. Special thanks go to Sólrún Sigurgeirsdóttir for scanning the WP2 samples. We would also like to thank Hedinn Valdimarsson for providing data on hydrography and for advice given. Furthermore, we want to thank Kristinn Gudmundsson for providing data and advice on in situ fluorescence and Niall McGinty for particularly useful discussions on parts of this work. Finally, we thank three anonymous referees for helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the EURO-BASIN − European Union Basin-scale Analysis, Synthesis and Integration – under grant no. FP7-ENV-2010 264933; and by the Marine Research Institute under grant no. 15.19.