Data from: Trophic interactions of fish communities at midwater depths enhance long-term carbon storage and benthic production on continental slopes

Biological transfer of nutrients and materials between linked ecosystems
influences global carbon budgets and ecosystem structure and function.
Identifying the organisms or functional groups that are responsible for
nutrient transfer, and quantifying their influence on ecosystem structure
and carbon capture is an essential step for informed management of
ecosystems in physically distant, but ecologically linked areas. Here, we
combine natural abundance stable isotope tracers and survey data to show
that mid-water and bentho-pelagic-feeding demersal fishes play an
important role in the ocean carbon cycle, bypassing the detrital particle
flux and transferring carbon to deep long-term storage. Global peaks in
biomass and diversity of fishes at mid-slope depths are explained by
competitive release of the demersal fish predators of mid-water organisms,
which in turn support benthic fish production. Over 50% of the biomass of
the demersal fish community at depths between 500 and 1800 m is supported
by biological rather than detrital nutrient flux processes, and we
estimate that bentho-pelagic fishes from the UK–Irish continental slope
capture and store a volume of carbon equivalent to over 1 million tonnes
of CO2 every year.