Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation

As many marine species face dwindling populations due to the effects of climate change, it is vital to gain crucial information on what this means for the future of these organisms and their surrounding ecosystems. In order to gain insight to what ocean ecosystems might look like with shifting climate variability, we can look to the past. The goal of this project is to produce a two-million-year record of abundance of pelagic fish and sharks in the waters off Cape Town, South Africa. A Ichthyolith Accumulation Rate (IAR) was established to identify fish and shark production over the span of 2 million years. Results from this study show significant fluctuations of IAR, potentially contributing to the glacial-interglacial cycles that characterize the Pleistocene. When compared to complementary data, IAR data from this site is significantly higher compared to other subtropical regions. This increased IAR may be attributed to the behavior of the Agulhas Current that flows around the southern end of the Cape of Good Hope. This project aims to expand the geological history of fish abundances, providing baseline data to fill gaps in knowledge and guide future management efforts.

See the storymap created for this project here: https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/9e02851bc352487db26e5c4aa9fed27b