Sensitivity of fish diel vertical migration depths to future changes in the Pacific Ocean oxygen minimum zone

Diel vertical migrations in the ocean play a key role in predator-prey dynamics and the functioning of the biological carbon pump. However, changes in ocean conditions including warming and deoxygenation threaten to significantly perturb vertical migration patterns over the twenty-first century. Specifically, vertical migrations over regions of critically low oxygen, known as oxygen minimum zones (OMZs), are likely to be most sensitive to changes in temperature and oxygen. In this study, we apply a simplified prognostic ecosystem model (APECOSM-1D) to changing conditions in the Pacific Ocean OMZ as simulated by 13 Earth System Models from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6). We find that modeled fish migration depths at a given location in the region may deepen or shoal by over 100 m by the end of the century; however, there are large uncertainties across the CMIP6 ensemble for the geographic pattern of migration depth changes. To reconcile this, we adopt a water mass based approach which aggregates changes into regions defined by their vertical oxygen minimum value. In this framework, we find that fish migration depths over the lowest oxygen core of the OMZ remain stable due to compensating changes in temperature and oxygen. Meanwhile, away from the OMZ core, ocean warming and deoxygenation together drive shallower migration depths in projected conditions.