Spatial and temporal effects of salinity, temperature and chlorophyll on the communities of zooplankton in the southeastern Bering Sea.

Two communities of zooplankton over the SE shelf of the Bering Sea are kept separate spatially by the lack of advection and frontal characteristics of the salinity distributions. The abundance of copepods over the middle shelf, between 50-100 m isobaths approximately, was highly correlated with seasonal warming of the surface layer, while abundances of copepods over the outer shelf and slope were not. The spring bloom of phytoplankton influenced abundances over the middle shelf more profoundly than the outer shelf; of the 12 taxa which composed most of the biomass of copepods over the middle shelf, 11 were significantly more abundant during the bloom than they were prior to the bloom. Over the outer shelf, only 6 of 18 taxa were significantly more abundant during the bloom, and over the slope, 3 of 18. -from Authors Copepods.