SYMPOSIUM ON ECOSYSTEM DYNAMICS IN THE NORWEGIAN SEA AND BARENTS SEA (ECONORTH)

Sub-Arctic seas support extraordinarily rich marine resources, which provide food and wealth to local communities. These seas include: the Okhotsk Sea, Oyashio shelf region, Bering Sea, Hudson Bay, Newfoundland/Labrador shelves, Gulf of St. Lawrence, Gree nland shelves. The Norwegian Sea and Barents Sea system hosts important commercial fish stocks, many large top-predator populations, large pelagic fish stocks like herring, blue-whiting and capelin and large demersal stocks of species such as cod, haddo ck and saithe Iceland regions, the Nordic Seas and the Barents Sea. The abundance and production of the major fish stocks such as herring, capelin and cod has changed significantly over the last 50 years in the Norwegian Sea and Barents Sea ecosystem. I t is unclear how these changes have affected and are affected by the food-web dynamics in the area. The understanding of these large-scale changes is still limited and there is a definite need for ideas, hypotheses, methods and approaches that may facil itate the build-up of relevant knowledge. Several hypotheses for the mechanisms for large-scale food-web changes have been proposed including; climate variability and changes, effects of human exploitation and top-down effects. The Symposium aims to iden tify processes in the ecosystem which are important for the variability in trophic transfer from plankton to fish. Also interesting are comparative studies from other areas with similar ecosystem changes or food-webs.