North Pacific Anadromous Fish Commission

Technical Report 17

Table of Contents

Zooplankton Community Structure and Development during Late Winter 2019 and 2020 in the Northeastern Pacific Ocean

Authors: 
Evgeny A. Pakhomov, Brian P.V. Hunt, Alexander Slabinsky, Natalie Mahara, and Alexei Somov

Abstract Excerpt:
The winter high seas habitat in the Gulf of Alaska is recognized to be critical for Pacific salmon survival, particularly during the first winter migration of all species. However, there is a general paucity of the baseline information for this ecosystem, which contributes to the uncertainty of current forecasts of salmon returns as well as fish foraging and behavior patterns in the changing North Pacific ecosystem. The limited understanding of the Gulf of Alaska pelagic system calls for basic ecological information about zooplankton that underlie the salmon potential prey fields, including its composition and density. Recent large-scale warming events in the North Pacific (e.g., the “Blob”) have highlighted the strong possibility of short- and long-term changes in the pelagic salmon habitat. Two winter expeditions were conducted in 2019 and 2020 as major contributions to the International Year of the Salmon announced in the fall of 2018. During 19 February–17 March 2019 and 12 March–7 April 2020, surveys of the Gulf of Alaska (GoA) were conducted to research the winter ecology of the North Pacific salmon ecosystem on board of R/V Professor Kaganovskiy and F/V Pacific Legacy No.1, respectively. Both surveys consisted of ~1 x 1-degree survey grids covering ~ 650,000–700,000 km2, which mainly overlapped in their southern parts (Fig. 1).

*This is the first paragraph of an extended abstract. Download the full abstract below.

DOI:
https://doi.org/10.23849/npafctr17/69.71.

Citation

Pakhomov, E.A., B.P.V. Hunt, A. Slabinsky, N. Mahara, and A. Somov.  2021.  Zooplankton community structure and development during late winter 2019 and 2020 in the Northeastern Pacific Ocean.  N. Pac. Anadr. Fish Comm. Tech. Rep. 17: 69–71.  https://doi.org/10.23849/npafctr17/69.71.