Eddies can enhance primary as well as secondary production, creating a diverse meso- and sub-mesoscale seascape at the eddy front which can affect the aggregation of plankton and particles. Due to the coarse resolution provided by sampling with plankton nets, our knowledge of plankton distributions at these edges is limited. We used a towed, undulating underwater imaging system to investigate the physical and biological drivers of zoo- and ichthyoplankton aggregations at the edge of a decaying mesoscale eddy (ME) in the Straits of Florida. Using a sparse Convolutional Neural Network we identified 132 million images of plankton. Larval fish andOithonaspp. copepod concentrations were significantly higher in the eddy water mass, compared to the Florida Current water mass, only four days before the ME's dissipation. Larval fish andOithonadistributions were tightly coupled, indicating potential predator-prey interactions. Larval fishes are known predators ofOithona, however, Random Forests models showed thatOithonaspp. and larval fish concentrations were primarily driven by variables signifying the physical footprint of the ME, such as current speed and direction. These results suggest that eddy-related advection leads to largely passive overlap between predator and prey, a positive, energy-efficient outcome for predators at the expense of prey.

Copepod lipids fuel the Arctic marine ecosystem, but information on the fine-scale distribution of copepods and lipids is nonexistent. This study investigated the fine-scale (1 m) vertical distribution of the copepods Calanus hyperboreus, Calanus glacialis and Metridia longa during a Lagrangian drift in the North Water Polynya using the Lightframe On-sight Keyspecies Investigation (LOKI) imaging system. A copepod species- and stage-specific automatic identification model based on machine learning, a subcategory of artificial intelligence, was used to identify images taken by LOKI. Lipids were measured from images of copepods taken over the whole water column (1 m resolution). Diel vertical migration (DVM) in all three species was detected. In C. hyperboreus and C. glacialis C4-females as well as M. longa C5-females lipid load of deep copepod individuals was significantly higher than that of shallower individuals. Vertical distribution profiles and individual lipid loads suggested that individuals with lower lipid load continued DVM, while others with high lipid load ceased migrating, remaining at depth. Calanus hyperboreus individuals seemed to migrate to diapause at lower lipid fullness (50%) than C. glacialis (60%). A bioenergetics model showed that Calanus females had enough lipids to diapause for over a year, highlighting the significant lipid overhead they use for capital breeding.