Bottom fish assemblages at the shelf and continental slope off East Greenland

During 2006 and 2008 two bottom trawl surveys were conducted at East Greenland to 72°N covering depths down to 1500 m. In the 149 trawl hauls in total 113 fish species were recorded of which 37 were considered pelagic and excluded from the analyses. As a first step the abundance data for the 76 benthic species were used for analyses of the fish fauna diversity and fish assemblages.

Nine assemblages were found by a standard type of cluster analysis. A Bayesian multinomial logit model was then applied to calculate vectors of probabilities defining the likelihood of each haul belonging to each of the nine clusters. By means of a geostatistical tool the spatial distribution of the conditional probabilities for each cluster (assemblage) was mapped.

Each of the nine assemblages was further defined by indicator species, depth and temperature. The assemblages were well defined regarding geographical distribution, species composition, temperature and depth. Three of the assemblages were located in the cold Iceland Sea while six were found in the somewhat warmer Irminger Sea