A critical scale in plankton aggregations across coastal ecosystems

[1] We examined the characteristics of biological patches at four different locations to assess the relationship of patch vertical scale, amplitude, and persistence. In contrast to patches of larger animals, we found that the majority of coherent aggregations of plankton at each site were vertically compressed, with most smaller than 5m vertically. A subset of these layers, often referred to as “thin layers” in the literature, was distinguished by high intensity and greater persistence but not thickness. Our results suggest that ~5m is a critical vertical scale below which aggregations of plankton frequently occur, pointing toward a controlling characteristic or a process common to a variety of regions and organism types. Given the commonality of this scale, insights into physical-biological dynamics gleaned from previous studies of the most intense and persistent of these patches may be applied more generally, leading to a better understanding of the ecosystem effects of heterogeneous plankton distributions. Citation: Benoit-Bird, K. J., E. L. Shroyer, and M. A. McManus (2013), A critical scale in plankton aggregations across coastal ecosystems,Geophys. Res. Lett., 40, 3968–3974, doi:10.1002/grl.50747.