Thursday March 14, 2024
Oregon State University —
Marine heat waves in the northeast Pacific Ocean create ongoing and complex disruptions of the ocean food web that may benefit some species but threaten the future of many others, a new study has shown.
The study, just published in the journal Nature Communications, is the first of its kind to examine the impacts of marine heat waves on the entire ocean ecosystem in the northern California Current, the span of waters along the West Coast from Washington to Northern California.
The researchers found that the biggest beneficiary of marine heat waves is gelatinous zooplankton – predominantly cylindrical-shaped pyrosomes that explode in numbers following a marine heat wave and shift how energy moves throughout the food web, said lead author Dylan Gomes, who worked on the study as a postdoctoral scholar with Oregon State University’s Marine Mammal Institute.