Summary
My visual abstract focuses on differences in mesopelagic micronekton communities at 500m, nearshore and offshore of west Hawai`i. Using night-time trawls, we showed differences in biomass, abundance and community composition between locations. My aim is to raise interest in the paper when published. My target audience are students and researchers, with a broad interest in tropical or deep-water marine ecology. They share an interest in, but necessarily expert knowledge of the field, so I have kept it non-technical and broad.
Beth Francis
Beth is a PhD student at Bangor University, studying deep water communities on the west coast of Hawai`i, in collaboration with NOAA.
She is interested in differences between biomass, abundance and community composition of micronekton (fish, shrimp and squid ranging between 2-20cm) nearshore and offshore, in the mesopelagic zone, between 200-1000m deep.
Through her research she hopes to show how seemingly spatially distant habitats link together as an interconnected marine ecosystem, and the importance of this in our changing world.
Email: b.francis@bangor.ac.uk
Twitter: @BH_Francis
Organisation: School of Ocean Sciences, Bangor University