September 30, 2020 — Scientists at the NOAA Northeast Fisheries Science Center have developed an unusually rich picture of who is eating whom off the Northeastern United States. The findings, published recently in Fish and Fisheries, provide a close look at fish feeding habits for 17 fish species, predators, and their prey.

The predators are divided into 48 predator-size categories, and 14 prey species. Fish predators included Atlantic cod, Atlantic herring, haddock, goosefish, pollock, spiny dogfish, winter flounder, and yellowtail founder among others. Prey species included forage fish, squid, zooplankton, shrimp-like crustaceans, shellfish, brittle stars, sand dollars, and sea urchins.

“We have the largest, continuous dataset of fish feeding habits in the world at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center, and that enabled us to do a study of this scale and scope,” said Brian Smith, a food habits researcher at the center and lead author of the study. “We focused on common and important prey for the many predatory fishes of interest, and hopefully filled in some gaps in information relating prey availability to predation.”

Feeding patterns within and among different groups of fishes vary by the size of the fish, the abundance or density of the prey, and other factors. Researchers who study marine ecosystems need to account for this predation in their models. Few studies, however, have looked simultaneously at the feeding patterns among different groups of predatory fish—fish feeders, plankton feeders, and benthic or bottom feeders. The study also looked at how those groups interact with their prey throughout the water column.

Read the full story at PHYS.org