A Holocene record of marine fish remains from the Northeastern Pacific

Ocean Drilling Program Leg 169S retrieved a complete Holocene sequence from Saanich Inlet, British Columbia, Canada. Fish and diatom remains were extr acted from sediments at Site 1034. Very small fish bones, teeth and scales were ubiquitous except in the lowermost glaciomarine clays; scales degraded with depth. In the identifiable fraction, Pacific herring were the most ab undant with Pacific hake and cartilaginous fish yielding significant fracti ons. Fish remains appear just before 12 000 BP but greatest diversity does not occur until about 6500 BP. A smoothed abundance curve highlights two pe riods of maximal abundance at about 1500 and 6500 BP. Abundances in the las t 1000 years are lower than the rest of the record. A correlation with abun dances of seven phytoplankton taxa is significant; diatoms explain about a third of the variance. This study demonstrates the use of fish and diatoms from the same paleosedimentary matrix to examine millennia-scale correlatio ns between primary and tertiary production. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.