Temperature and prey quality effects on growth of juvenile walleye pollock Theragra chalcogramma (Pallas): a spatially explicit bioenergetics approach

A bioenergetics model for juvenile age‐0 year walleye pollock Theragra chalcogramma was applied to a spatially distinct grid of samples in the western Gulf of Alaska to investigate the influence of temperature and prey quality on size‐specific growth. Daily growth estimates for 50, 70 and 90 mm standard length (LS) walleye pollock during September 2000 were generated using the bioenergetics model with a fixed ration size. Similarities in independent estimates of prey consumption generated from the bioenergetics model and a gastric evacuation model corroborated the performance of the bioenergetics model, concordance correlation (rc) = 0·945, lower 95% CL (transformed) (L1) = 0·834, upper 95% CL (transformed) (L2) = 0·982, P < 0·001. A mean squared error analysis (MSE) was also used to partition the sources of error between both model estimates of consumption into a mean component (MC), slope component (SC), and random component (RC). Differences between estimates of daily consumption were largely due to differences in the means of estimates (MC= 0·45) and random sources (RC= 0·49) of error, and not differences in slopes (SC= 0·06). Similarly, daily growth estimates of 0·031–0·167 g day−1 generated from the bioenergetics model was within the range of growth estimates of 0·026–0·190 g day−1 obtained from otolith analysis of juvenile walleye pollock. Temperature and prey quality alone accounted for 66% of the observed variation between bioenergetics and otolith growth estimates across all sizes of juvenile walleye pollock. These results suggest that the bioenergetics model for juvenile walleye pollock is a useful tool for evaluating the influence of spatially variable habitat conditions on the growth potential of juvenile walleye pollock.