Ecology and oceanography of shallow banks and coastal seamounts

Shallow banks are ecological hotspots, in the sense that densities of key species are elevated. Our lab investigates the ecology of shallow banks and coastal seamounts. The emphasis is in investigating the physical-biological processes that cause aggregation of zooplankton, planktivorous fish, and their predators, as well as the zonation of seamounts

Hannibal Seamount. © Jesús Pineda. All rights reserved.

Our current research on shallow banks and seamounts:

• Physical and biological processes that cause elevated densities of zooplankton, zooplanktivorous fish, and their predators in shallow banks. Prey aggregation by internal waves and foraging and distributional response by fish and large vertebrates.
• DIstribution of fish and small sharks in nonlinear internal waves.
• Aggregation of zooplankton, zooplanktivosour fish, and pelagic predators mediated by hydraulic jumps.
• Ecology and oceanography of Hannibal seamount, a coastal tropical seamount. See webpage (scroll down!) and video (click!) of our cruise to Hannibal seamount in the Ocean Media Institute website.

• Patchiness, population dentisy, and behavioral observations of a galatheoid anomuran crab swarm (click the title for the web site, and here for a PDF). See below for the video of the press release, and the swarm of Pleuroncodes planipes.

 For media coverage, search the web for "Panama crab swarm"