Effectively modeling the impact of climate change on any population requires careful consideration of diverse pressures. Potential changes in interactions with other species must be accounted for. As communities reassemble and shifts in abundance and distribution cascade throughout ecosystems, cumulative impacts on species of conservation concern need to be explicitly examined. A structured qualitative analysis of alternative...

An understanding of oceanographic conditions and processes important to marine animal ecology is fundamental to the development of effective management and conservation actions. Longfin Smelt ( Spirinchus thaleichthys ) is a pelagic forage fish found in coastal and estuarine waters along the Pacific coast of North America from Alaska to central California. Substantial population declines in California’s San Francisco Estuary,...

Variation in the recruitment of salmon is often found to be correlated with marine climate indices, but mechanisms behind environment–recruitment relationships remain unclear and correlations often break down over time. We used an ecosystem modeling approach to explore bottom‐up and top‐down mechanisms linking a variable environment to salmon recruitment variations. Our ecosystem model incorporates a regional ocean circulation...

Introduction Understanding how abundance, productivity and distribution of individual species may respond to climate change is a critical first step towards anticipating alterations in marine ecosystem structure and function, as well as developing strategies to adapt to the full range of potential changes. Methods This study applies the NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) Fisheries Climate Vulnerability Asse...

Fishes are known to use deep-sea coral and sponge (DSCS) species as habitat, but it is uncertain whether this relationship is facultative (circumstantial and not restricted to a particular function) or obligate (necessary to sustain fish populations). To explore whether DSCS provide essential habitats for demersal fishes, we analyzed 10 years of submersible survey video transect data, documenting the locations and abundance of...

Early ocean survival of Chinook salmon, Oncorhynchus tshawytscha, varies greatly inter‐annually and may be the period during which later spawning abundance and fishery recruitment are set. Therefore, identifying environmental drivers related to early survival may inform better models for management and sustainability of salmon in a variable environment. With this in mind, our main objectives were to (a) identify regions of hig...

Extreme variability in abundance of California salmon populations is often ascribed to ocean conditions, yet relatively little is known about their marine life history. To investigate which ocean conditions influence their distribution and abundance, we surveyed juvenile Chinook salmon ( Oncorhynchus tshawytscha ) within the California Current (central California [37°30′N) to Newport, Oregon (44°00′N]) for a 2‐week period over...