Decreased Temperate but not Polar Fish Productivity Across the Eocene-Oligocene Transition: Insights from Ichthyoliths

Abstract:

The Eocene-Oligocene Transition (EOT, 38-28 Ma) was a period of global cooling and increased nutrient delivery to the ocean. It is associated with the onset of permanent ice sheet on Antarctica, and the beginning of a highly productive polar ecosystem, dominated by diatoms and favoring short, efficient food chains. In a highly efficient, large phytoplankton-dominated ecosystem, we would expect to see higher abundances of consumers, as fewer trophic steps means more carbon available to upper trophic level groups. Here we use the accumulation rate of ichthyoliths (fish teeth and dermal scales) to measure the relative export production of fish through this time period of changing climate. Records from the South Atlantic gyre (DSDP Site 522) the South Pacific Gyre (DSDP Site 596) and the Southern Ocean (DSDP Site 689) show a 50% reduction in ichthyolith accumulation rate in the vicinity the Eocene Oligocene boundary. However, this drop in fish production occurs just after the E/O in the Atlantic, 4 million years before the E/O in the Pacific and 6 million years prior to the E/O in the Southern Ocean. Since the EOT is generally associated with an increase in productivity and diatom blooms in the Southern Ocean and tropical Pacific, we would expect that the abundance of fish would increase across the transition. Our results are surprisingly the inverse of this expectation, and suggest that the transition from greenhouse to icehouse did not produce increase in forage fish or even a response of any kind during the climatological transition into the icehouse world. Indeed, it seems that ichthyolith accumulation rate and primary productivity are not perfectly linked, and it may be that ichthyolith accumulation is responding more to another factor, such as ocean temperature or prey availability that is not linked to the increased diatom production during the EOT.