Effects of interactions between fish populations on ecosystem dynamics and fish recruitment in the Norwegian Sea (INFERNO)

The Norwegian Sea harbours some of the largest fish stocks in the world, including Norwegian spring spawning herring, blue whiting, mackerel and horse mackerel. These planktivorous stocks have substantial spatial- and diet overlap, and by virtue of their high abundances, they can potentially have a strong ecological impact on the ecosystem and each other. In spite of the potential importance for ecosystem functioning, there have been few studies addressing the interactions between planktivorous fish stock s in general and in the Norwegian Sea in particular. The topic therefore remains a major challenge in marine ecology. The main goal of the project is to quantify the interactions between herring, blue whiting, mackerel and horse mackerel in the Norwegian Sea. This goal will be achieved through a combined effort involving historic data analysis and modelling. The project will benefit strongly from extensive data sets on physics, plankton and fish distribution from collaborating Norwegian, Russian, Icelandi c and Faeroese marine institutions. A novel individual based modelling approach will be used to generate data driven 3D distributions of the key fish stocks and quantify their overlap and interactions over the life cycle. The project will improve our unde rstanding of the functioning of the Norwegian Sea ecosystem and generate several products that can be useful for ecosystem management including estimates of carrying capacity of planktivorous fish and distribution of fish stocks among economic zones.