Bajo Espitritu Santo; biological abundance hotspot off Bahia de La Paz
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.37543/oceanides.v33i1.224Keywords:
seamount, Gulf of California, biological productivityAbstract
Bajo Espíritu Santo (EBES) is a submarine mountain located 9 nautical miles from the northern end of the Espíritu Santo archipelago, outside Bahia de La Paz. It is considered as a hotspot of biodiversity and biomass that has motivated studies to understand the processes that make it an area of high biological activity. Processes that enrich the EBES are advection and vertical transport, mainly caused by tides and currents that collide with the mountain. Also, there is retention of organisms, particularly zooplankton, which favors a biological enrichment. A review on hydrography, dynamics and biology is presented, complemented with time series analysis of satellite information on sea surface temperature, surface chlorophyll, net primary productivity, and euphotic zone depth, to identify the variability of seasonal and interannual processes affecting the mountain. The main processes that enrich EBES are mixture due to the vertical cut of the currents; the vertical transport caused by tidal currents that collide with the mountain; advection by jet currents originating in the interior of the bay and/or eddies from the Gulf of California; the retention of zooplankton organisms in the vicinity of the mountain. Two periods of productivity, one in spring and the other at late summer indicate a bimodal regime with dominant periods of 12 and 6 months respectively. Additionally, there is an inter-annual variability dominated by periods of 5 and 7.5 years associated with ENSO. Combination of these factors give EBES its ability for nutrient and plankton enrichment throughout the year, which attracts secondary consumers and top predators, turning it into a point of great biological activity.
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Copyright (c) 2018 Eduardo González -Rodríguez, Armando Trasviña -Castro, Alejandro Ramos -Rodríguez
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