Trophic interactions in the St. Lawrence Estuary (Canada): Must the blue whale compete for krill?

Inverse methodology was used to construct a mass-balance model of the Lower St. Lawrence Estuary (LSLE) for the 2008–2010 time period. Our first objective was to make an overall description of community structure, trophic interactions, and the effects of fishing and predation on the vertebrate and invertebrate communities of the ecosystem. A second objective was to identify other important predators of krill, and to assess if these compete with blue whales, listed as endangered under the Canadian Species at Risk Act in 2005 (northwest Atlantic population). The Estuary and the Gulf of St. Lawrence are summer feeding grounds for blue whales and other marine mammals. Blue whales eat only euphausiids (krill) and require dense concentrations of prey to meet their energy requirements, which makes them particularly vulnerable to changes in prey availability. In the LSLE, many species from secondary producers (hyperiid amphipods, other macrozooplankton) to top predators (fish, birds, and marine mammals) consumed euphausiids. Consequently, krill predators were found at all consumer trophic levels. However, our results showed that only about 35% of the estimated euphausiid production was consumed by all predator species combined. Euphausiid did not seem to be a restricted resource in the LSLE ecosystem, at least during the study period. The blue whale did not appear to have to compete for krill in the LSLE.