They call it “the Blob.”
A decade ago, sea surface temperatures in the Pacific shot up to 11 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than normal. A high pressure system parked over the ocean, and winds that churn cold, nutrient-rich water from the depths to the surface died down. Stagnant, warm water spread across the Northeast Pacific, in a marine heat wave that lasted for three years.
Under the surface, the food web broke down and ecosystems convulsed, at first unseen to humans on shore. But soon, clues washed up.
Dead Cassin’s auklets — small, dark gray seabirds — piled up on West Coast beaches. The auklets were followed by common murres, a slightly bigger black-and-white seabird. The carcasses were knee-deep in places, impossible to miss.
Researchers are still untangling the threads of what happened, and they caution against drawing universal conclusions from a single regional event. But the Blob fundamentally changed many scientists’ understanding of what climate change could do to life in the ocean; 10 years later, the disaster is one of our richest sources of information on what happens to marine life as the temperature rises.
And it is more relevant than ever. Last year, multiple “super-marine heat waves” blanketed parts of the ocean. Averaged together, global sea surface temperatures broke records, often by wide margins, for months in 2023 and 2024. As the climate warms, scientists expect extreme marine heat waves to become more frequent.
The Blob “was a window into what we might see in the future,” said Julia Parrish, a marine ecologist at the University of Washington who runs the Coastal Observation and Seabird Survey Team, a network of volunteers who survey beaches from Northern California to Alaska.
Map locates the Greater Farrallones National Marine Sanctuary and the Cordell Bank National Marine Sanctuary in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California near San Francisco.
Santa
Rosa
5 miles
Bodega
Bay
CALIFORNIA
Cordell Bank
National
Marine
Sanctuary
Gulf of the
Farallones
Pacific Ocean
Greater Farallones
National Marine
Sanctuary
golden gate
bridge
Rodeo
Beach
Oakland
San
Francisco
Detail
area
Farallon
Islands
CALIF.
Santa
Rosa
5 miles
Bodega
Bay
CALIFORNIA
Cordell Bank
National
Marine
Sanctuary
Gulf of the
Farallones
Pacific
Ocean
Greater Farrallones
National Marine
Sanctuary
Rodeo
Beach
San
Francisco
Detail
area
Farallon
Islands
CALIF.
By The New York Times
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