Abstract
The North Sea ecosystem is well represented by Steele’s model (1974) (Fig. 1). The quantities in the trophic levels are determined by a primary production of 90 gC m-2 yr-1 (or 900 kcal m-2 yr-1) and annual catches of 2.04 million tons of pelagic fish and of 0.93 million tons of demersal fish. The quantities in the intermediate trophic levels were estimated from reasonable values of the transfer rates. The whole system is driven by the grazing of the herbivores; the herbivore energy was divided equally between the pelagic fish and the planktonic carnivores and that in their faecal pellets was transferred to the demersal fish, or at least to their adults, via the benthos. It is a fixed engine, which on the face of it cannot easily account for change.
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© 1983 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Cushing, D.H. (1983). Sources of Variability in the North Sea Ecosystems. In: Sündermann, J., Lenz, W. (eds) North Sea Dynamics. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-68838-6_34
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-68838-6_34
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