January 27, 2020 — It will come as no surprise to local anglers that different fish species are now found in Rhode Island waters. In some cases, these fish are displacing ones traditionally found here, and scientists are trying to understand which species pose the greatest threat to the native marine populations of Narragansett Bay.
Students presented some of the findings Thursday at the University of Rhode Island Graduate School of Oceanography. The talks on the bay’s marine food web were part of the monthly Bay Informed series sponsored by Rhode Island Sea Grant and open to the public.
“It gets more complicated when you start realizing that there’s a lot of different predators for any given species,” said Maggie Heinichen, a master’s degree candidate. They’re not just eaten by one thing. And it gets even more complicated when you look at an entire ecosystem.”
Scientists have looked at changes at both the bottom and the top of the food web, analyzing fluctuations in populations of organisms at the bottom, like plankton, and of fish at the top level such as striped bass.