Transport and coastal zooplankton communities in the northern California Current system

Abstract

[1] Alongshore transport was estimated from the gridded AVISO altimeter data and water level data from NOAA tide gauges (1993–2010) for the northern California Current (NCC) system. The biomass of the cold neritic copepods including Calanus marshallae, Pseudocalanus mimus and Acartia longiremis (dominants in the eastern Bering Sea, coastal Gulf of Alaska, and NCC) was estimated from a 15 year time series of zooplankton samples (1996–2010) collected biweekly at a coastal station 9 km off Newport Oregon U.S.A. The alongshore currents and the biomass of the cold neritic copepods exhibit a strong seasonal pattern and fluctuate in opposite phase: positive alongshore current (from south) leads to low biomass in winter and negative alongshore current (from north) leads to high biomass in summer. When the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) is positive, i.e., warm conditions around the northeast Pacific, there is more movement of water from the south in the NCC during winter. When the PDO is negative, there is more movement of water from the north during summer. The mean biomass of cold neritic copepods was positively correlated with the survival rate of juvenile coho salmon and cumulative transport was negatively correlated with coho salmon survival, i.e., in years when a greater portion of the source waters feeding the NCC enters from the north, the greater the salmon survival. We conclude that alongshore transport manifests PDO signals and serves as a linkage between large scale forcing to local ecosystem dynamics.