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From California to Alaska, the Pacific Ocean experienced unprecedented warm water from 2014-2016. This marine heatwave known as “The Blob”, caused widespread die-offs of seabirds, declines in fish populations, and brought marine life from more tropical regions of the Pacific to the Gulf of Alaska like skipjack tuna and ocean sunfish. How this warm water affected the tiniest animals in the ocean, zooplankton, was not clear. The mishmash of microscopic animals that make up the zooplankton community form the base of the food web and are important food for fishes, seabirds, and whales. In Cook Inlet and its main arm Kachemak Bay, zooplankton have been collected for the past ten years. We looked at the individual species that make up zooplankton to see how this community was affected by the marine heatwave. We found that, like ocean sunfish and skipjack tuna, the abundance of copepods (shrimp-like zooplankton smaller than a grain of rice) from warm water regions off the coast of California increased in numbers in Alaskan waters. One particular copepod species (pictured above: Corycaeus anglicus) is a voracious predator of other zooplankton that could impact the “normal” zooplankton community in the Cook Inlet region.
Read the recently published manuscript in Deep-Sea Research Part II by PWSSC research assistant Caitlin McKinstry: Influence of the 2014–2016 marine heatwave on seasonal zooplankton community structure and abundance in the lower Cook Inlet, Alaska.
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