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The trophic link between cod (Gadus sp.) and capelin (Mallotus sp.) is important in many panarctic ecosystems. Since the early 2000s, the Northeast Arctic cod stock (G. morhua) in the Barents Sea has increased greatly, and the sea has been exceptionally warm. Such changes have potentially large effects on species distributions and overlap, which in turn could affect the strength of species interactions. Due to its high latitude location, the Barents Sea has strong seasonal variation in physical conditions and interactions. To study drivers of variation in cod-capelin overlap, we use data from two annual surveys run in winter and in autumn of 2004-2015. We first model winter and autumn spatial distributions of mature and immature cod and capelin. We then calculate overlap from model predictions on a grid with similar spatial resolution as the survey data. Our approach allowed us to interpret changes in overlap as species-specific effects of stock size and temperature, while accounting for sampling variation due to sampling time and depth. We found that during winter both species expanded their distribution in response to increased stock sizes, but how strongly and where the expansion occurred varied. The effect of temperature on distributions varied in space, and differed for cod and capelin and for different components of the two species. The results for autumn were clearer and more consistent. Both species expanded their distribution areas as their stock sizes increased. A positive effect of temperature was found in the north-eastern Barents Sea, where temperatures were lowest at the start of the study. Overlap increased and shifted north-eastwards during the study period and remained high despite a decline in the capelin stock. The increased overlap during autumn could mainly be attributed to the shift in cod distribution with increased cod stock biomass., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Ecosystem surveys are carried out annually in the Barents Sea by Russia and Norway to monitor the spatial distribution of ecosystem components and to study population dynamics. One component of the survey is mapping the upper pelagic zone using a trawl towed at several depths. However, the current technique with a single codend does not provide fine-scale spatial data needed to directly study species overlaps. An in-trawl camera system, Deep Vision, was mounted in front of the codend in order to acquire continuous images of all organisms passing. It was possible to identify and quantify of most young-of-the-year fish (e.g. Gadus morhua, Boreogadus saida and Reinhardtius hippoglossoides) and zooplankton, including Ctenophora, which are usually damaged in the codend. The system showed potential for measuring the length of small organisms and also recorded the vertical and horizontal positions where individuals were imaged. Young-of-the-year fish were difficult to identify when passing the camera at maximum range and to quantify during high densities. In addition, a large number of fish with damaged opercula were observed passing the Deep Vision camera during heaving; suggesting individuals had become entangled in meshes farther forward in the trawl. This indicates that unknown numbers of fish are probably lost in forward sections of the trawl and that the heaving procedure may influence the number of fish entering the codend, with implications for abundance indices and understanding population dynamics. This study suggests modifications to the Deep Vision and the trawl to increase our understanding of the population dynamics.

Population growth, and hence the population's persistence, is affected by several factors such as climate, species interaction, and harvesting pressure. Proper resource management requires an understanding of these factors. We apply techniques based upon age-structured population matrices to analyze estimated stock sizes derived from annual bottom trawl sampling in the winter feeding area of northeast Arctic cod (Gadus morhua L.) from 1981 to 2003. We run generalized additive models to explain population growth rate by different explanatory variables. Cod population growth was found to be positively related to the abundance of capelin (Mallotus villosus Miller), negatively related to the number of cannibalistic cod with a two-year lag, and marginally positively related to the winter North Atlantic Oscillation index (NAO). This model remains true independently from the population status (i.e., fished or non-fished). Capelin abundance is the main variable that to some degree can be adjusted in order to maintain the population size at a given level of cod harvesting. Our results point to the importance of managing conjointly cod and capelin stocks.