Marta Moyano

Congratulations to Dr. Marta Moyano! Last Thursday Marta Moyano defended her Ph.D. Thesis entitled "Temporal and spatial distribution of the ichthyoplankton in the Canary Islands". She obtained the European Ph.D. degree with the higher mark "Cum Laude". Marta has been working very hard during the last four years in the Biological Oceanography Group. She sampled ichtyoplankton every week during two and a half years, performed an impressive sampling during the ConAfrica 0603 cruise on board the RV "Hespérides" and visited Australia to work on the analysis of fish larvae otoliths. Thousands of ichtyoplankton samples were counted and analysed. This impressive work will be a reference for all those interested in the early stages of fish in the Canary Current. She was also a nice person and it was a pleasure to work with her and to have discussions about her work and in general about oceanography. Once more: Congratulations!

Dr. Marta Moyano

Cover of the Thesis manuscript by Marta Moyano

The main conclusions of her thesis were:

(1) The larval fish community off Gran Canaria Island is highly diverse. Neritic (Clupeidae, Sparidae & Gobidae) and oceanic (Myctophidae, Gonostomatidae & Photichthydae) larvae equally contribute to the larval assemblage.

(2) Two temperature-dependent seasonal LFAs off Gran Canaria:
•Winter-spring assemblage, which occurs during the mixing of the water column and the late winter bloom. Relatively high abundances of Sardinella aurita, Boops boops and Cyclothone braueri and presence of e.g. Pomacentridae sp1 and Lobianchia dofleini.
•Summer-autumn assemblage, which occurs during the stratification period of the water column. Relatively high abundances of larvae of Gobidae species and of Cyclothone braueri, Ceratoscopelus warmingii, Pomacentridae sp2, and Anthias anthias, and presence of Trachinus draco and Tetraodontidae sp1.

(3) Two stagnation regions up- and downstream of Gran Canaria are confirmed as accumulation areas of eggs and neritic fish larvae on a long-time scale. But the composition of the larval assemblage is not site-dependent.

(4) Strong relationship between mesoscale oceanographic processes and fish larvae, especially between upwelling filaments and sardine and anchovy.
•Filaments transport larvae of African neritic fish species into the oceanic region and towards the Canary Islands
•This larval transport is responsible for the high abundances of neritic larvae recorded in the oceanic realm during summer.
•Clupeoid larvae transported to Gran Canaria Island enhance local larval fish populations.
•Upwelling filaments may be trapped by the quasi-permanent cyclonic eddy, and this complex may act either as a retention or dispersal structure for the African neritic fish larvae.

(5) Metabolic activity of clupeoid larvae during an upwelling filament event revealed that grazing decreased offshore, while respiration increased, fish larvae might be affected by the transition of the planktonic community from the eutrophic to the oligotrophic regime.