OOS2025-166, updated on 26 Mar 2025
https://doi.org/10.5194/oos2025-166
One Ocean Science Congress 2025
© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
      Marine Heatwaves Modulate Food Webs and Carbon Transport Processes
Mariana Bernardi Bif1,2, Colleen Kellogg3, Yibin Huang4, Julia Anstett5,6, Sachia Traving7, Angelica Peña8, Steven Hallam5,6,9, and Kenneth Johnson2
Mariana Bernardi Bif et al.
  • 1Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science, University of Miami, Miami, US
  • 2Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI), Moss Landing CA, United States
  • 3Hakai Institute, Heriot Bay BC, Canada
  • 4State Key Laboratory of Marine Environmental Science, Xiamen University, Xiamen, China
  • 5Department of Microbiology & Immunology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada
  • 6Genome Science and Technology Program, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC Canada
  • 7University of Southern Denmark, Denmark
  • 8Institute of Ocean Sciences, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Sidney BC, Canada
  • 9Graduate Program in Bioinformatics, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada

The impact of marine heatwaves (MHWs) on ecosystem functions and services remains poorly constrained due in part to the limited availability of time-resolved datasets integrating physical, chemical and biological parameters at relevant operating scales. Here we paired over a decade of autonomous Biogeochemical (BGC)-Argo profiling float data with water column plankton community composition profiles to investigate the impacts of MHWs on carbon cycling dynamics in the Northeastern subarctic Pacific Ocean (NESAP), resolving temperature-induced changes in production and transport of particulate organic carbon (POC) within the water column. POC concentrations were extremely high during MHWs in Spring 2015 and 2019, associated with detritus enhancement and changes in plankton community structure. Instead of sinking, particles <100 µm accumulated in mesopelagic waters where remineralization happened slowly over the year, thus decreasing the rapid deep particle export and carbon sequestration potential of thermally-impacted waters.  

How to cite: Bernardi Bif, M., Kellogg, C., Huang, Y., Anstett, J., Traving, S., Peña, A., Hallam, S., and Johnson, K.:       Marine Heatwaves Modulate Food Webs and Carbon Transport Processes, One Ocean Science Congress 2025, Nice, France, 3–6 Jun 2025, OOS2025-166, https://doi.org/10.5194/oos2025-166, 2025.