Blob and El Niño Bode Poorly for
West Coast Marine Food Chain

LAbove is an example of a “copepod,” which is a type of zooplankton, a planktonic crustacean distantly related to shrimp and crabs. COPEPOD is an acronym for the Coastal & Oceanic Plankton Ecology, Production, & Observation Database, a global plankton database. Photo by National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration, public domain

Warm water brought on by the massive warm water conditions of the U.S. west coast known as the Blob and the warm water that comes with this year’s El Niño are likely to negatively impact the size and abundance of commercial species while those warm conditions are around. Copepods, a microscopic plankton that feeds on algae at the bottom of the food chain, tend to be full of nutrients and fat in colder water. Warm water conditions are bringing leaner copepods to the west coast, which will ultimately result in fewer nutrients working their way up into the salmon, crab and other species that are the bases of west coast commercial fisheries. Fewer nutrients mean fewer, smaller fish – and more work for commercial fishermen to make their bread.