2019
Chapter
978-5-7444-4636-9
Natalia L. Demchenko, John W. Chapman, Valery A. Sosnin,Ilya A. Shcherbakov, Sergey E. Dyakov, Victor V. Ivin, Evgeniy P. Dats Hydrological influences on amphipod abundances with depth in gray whale feeding areas on the Northeastern Sakhalin shelf (Sea of Okhotsk).// Marine Biodiversity for a Healthy Ocean – Biodiversity, Functional Groups and Ocean Health :Proceedings of the Russia-China Bilateral Workshop,October 10–11, 2019, Vladivostok, Russia. P. 81-90.
Western Pacific gray whales (WGW from here on) of the eastern Sakhalin Island Shelf (Sea of Okhotsk) feed primarily on benthic gammaridean amphipods within a Nearshore area and an Offshore area that are separated by less than 40 km. The total area of the Nearshore survey area is approximately ~1100 km2 and the total Offshore area is approximately ~2000 km2 (Blanchard et al., 2019a, b). However, we are concerned with the portions of these feeding areas where significant biomass densities of amphipods occur. The approximately 71.1x5.4 km (384 km2 ) “Nearshore” amphipod polygon ranges in depths between 2 and 35 m and the approximately 39.7x33.7 km (1.338 km2 ) “Offshore” polygon ranges in depths between 20 and 65 m (Fadeev, 2012; Demchenko et al., 2016; Blanchard et al., 2019a)