Highly mobile pelagic species co‐occur with fine‐scale ocean fronts

Abstract Coastal areas are an important source of food and a valuable tourism asset for communities, but also highly dynamic and heterogeneous environments. Understanding how marine species respond to the variability of their habitat is essential to sustainably manage coastal resources. Here we investigate the distribution of highly mobile marine species in relation to fine‐scale fronts (< 10 km) in North‐East Aotearoa New Zealand. We use fishery dependent catch and aerial observations to assess species distribution and compare their locations to the position of fronts tracked using high‐resolution ocean color images. We find significant aggregation near fine‐scale surface chlorophyll a fronts for most species considered. Specifically blue mackerel, kahawai, and jack mackerel are most often found in regions of moderate to high chlorophyll a and characterized by strong spatial gradients in ocean color. On the other hand, seabirds and mammals collocated most often with higher chlorophyll a concentrations and lower gradients compared to the other species examined. These findings advance our understanding of how mobile marine species interact with fine‐scale coastal fronts, suggesting that these features and their variability need to be accounted explicitly for habitat modeling and effective management.