Ecosystem-based fisheries management, which considers the interactions between fisheries, target species, and the physical and biological components of ecosystems, is necessary to ensure that directed fisheries avoid adverse impacts to ecosystems over the long term. The successful implementation of ecosystem-based fisheries management requires an understanding of predator− prey relationships and ways to operationalize such relationships to inform fisheries management. Here, we investigated if the diet of a generalist predator, Atlantic puffin Fratercula arctica, can be used as an indicator of the abundance of 2 commercially exploited prey species (haddock Melanogrammus aeglefinus and Acadian redfish Sebastes fasciatus) in the Gulf of Maine. Because haddock and redfish eaten by puffins are juveniles (age 0), there is potential to use their proportions and lengths in puffin diet to better understand the processes influencing haddock and redfish recruitment. By using principal component analysis to develop measures of diet across multiple puffin colonies, we show both spatial variation and large-scale patterns in the proportions and lengths of haddock and redfish in puffin diet. Spawning stock biomass was a strong predictor of haddock proportion in puffin diet and a moderate predictor of redfish proportion; however, proportions in puffin diet did not predict age-1 recruitment, suggesting that variation in recruitment is caused by processes that occur after the puffin breeding season and which affect the survival of older juveniles. Haddock length on one colony was a moderate predictor of age-1 recruitment. We conclude that puffin diet can be used as an indicator of haddock and redfish abundance.

中文翻译：

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大西洋海雀饮食反映了缅因湾黑线鳕和红鱼的丰度

基于生态系统的渔业管理考虑了渔业、目标物种以及生态系统的物理和生物组成部分之间的相互作用，对于确保定向渔业长期避免对生态系统产生不利影响是必要的。以生态系统为基础的渔业管理的成功实施需要了解捕食者-猎物的关系以及将这种关系运用到渔业管理中的方法。在这里，我们调查了一种多面手捕食者大西洋海雀 Fratercula arctica 的饮食是否可以用作缅因湾 2 种商业开发的猎物（黑线鳕 Melanogrammus aeglefinus 和阿卡迪亚红鱼 Sebastes fasciatus）丰度的指标。因为海雀吃的黑线鳕和红鱼是幼鱼（0岁），有可能在海雀饲料中使用它们的比例和长度来更好地了解影响黑线鳕和红鱼补充的过程。通过使用主成分分析来开发多个海雀群的饮食测量，我们展示了海雀饮食中黑线鳕和红鱼的比例和长度的空间变化和大尺度模式。产卵种群生物量是海雀饲料中黑线鳕比例的强预测因子和红鱼比例的中度预测因子；然而，海雀饮食中的比例并不能预测 1 岁的补充，这表明补充的变化是由发生在海雀繁殖季节之后的过程引起的，这些过程影响了年龄较大的海雀的存活。一个群体的黑线鳕长度是 1 岁招募的中等预测因子。