Project: Collaborative Research: Assessing the relative importance of small vs large particles as sources of nutrition to abyssal communities

NSF Award Abstract:
The abyssal plains of the oceans cover roughly half of the earth's surface, host enormous reservoirs of biodiversity and mineral resources, and play important roles in nutrient recycling and carbon sequestration. The most important process controlling the structure and function of these ecosystems is the quantity and quality of food (mostly sinking organic particles) that reaches the deep-sea floor. However, we do not fully understand the processes provisioning this vast ecosystem. We propose to evaluate the relative importance of small and larger "marine snow" particles that sink to deep-sea benthic communities by using the stable isotope signature of amino acids within various food sources and trace their consumption by fauna on the seafloor. This project compares ecosystems from the productive waters off California with the nutrient poor central Pacific, north of Hawaii. This project provides novel insights into how surface ocean processes are coupled to food-webs at the deep ocean seafloor and how changes in food sources potentially impact deep-sea communities. This project also provides excellent training opportunities for graduate students, a postdoctoral researcher, and undergraduates at UH and USC, particularly underrepresented minorities who pursue majors in the geosciences. The project will sponsor an annual G6-12 teacher workshop to inform Hawaii educators about the deep sea and broadly disseminate knowledge to the community. All results are communicated broadly to inform the public as concerns regarding abyssal ecosystems are rising due to interests in deep-sea mining.

The most important process controlling the structure and function of abyssal ecosystems is the quantity and quality of organic material that ultimately reaches the deep-sea floor. Despite the strong relationship between euphotic zone export flux and benthic ecology, studies of abyssal ecosystems have observed a deficit between food supply and benthic community demand. Additional work is therefore needed, particularly with regards to understanding the sources of nutrition to the deep-sea benthos. Recent evidence suggests that small particles may be significant contributors to carbon export, increasing in relative importance with depth in the mesopelagic and reaching the abyssal seafloor. This project is to evaluate the relative importance of small and larger "marine snow" particles to deep-sea benthic communities using a combination of particle flux measurements and state of the art compound specific stable isotope analysis of amino acids (AA-CSIA) at two abyssal locations that contrast in overlying productivity, seasonality, and export magnitude. Time series measurements at these locations (Sta. M off California and Sta. Aloha off Hawaii) provide a rich context for the work. In the mesopelagic central North Pacific larger particles (>53 um) can be resolved from microbially reworked, smaller (0.7-53 um) particles using AA-CSIA. This project is characterizing the isotopic compositions of key individual compounds in a continuum of particle sizes (< 1.0 um suspended particles to large sinking particles >53 um) collected using in situ filtration near the seafloor and bottom-moored sediment traps, thereby defining source-specific isotopic signatures that can be traced into benthic fauna and sediments (that are collected by ROVs and epibenthic sleds). This research to understand pelagic-benthic coupling from particles to megafauna using isotopic measurements at the compound-level will yield novel insights into the importance of small microbially reworked particles to deep-sea benthic food webs. This will more precisely couple surface ocean processes to food-webs at the deep ocean seafloor with implications for understanding climate change effects and the efficiency of energy transfer to higher trophic levels. Furthermore, isotopic measurements can also be used to further parameterize ecosystem models by quantifying trophic position across size classes and thus estimate predator-prey mass ratios in relation to variation in body size spectra, functional type, and ultimately to carbon flux and remineralization. Finally, the results will help refine interpretations of deep-sea paleorecords of past nitrogen dynamics by calibrating potential changes in organic matter isotope values between the surface and seafloor archives.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.