Saving Seafood

Study finds El Niño events can boost nutrients in Gulf of Alaska

September 23, 2026 — The Gulf of Alaska is particularly vulnerable to the effects of events like marine heatwaves and El Niños, which can devastate its lucrative fisheries. But a new study has found El Niños can offer some benefits to the Gulf of Alaska.

Élise Beaudin is a physical oceanographer at a research facility called Ocean Networks Canada in British Columbia, and a lead author on the study, which was published in the Journal of Physical Oceanography on Sept. 10. Her research focused on what’s called the Alaska subpolar gyre, which is basically a giant counterclockwise swirl of water, thousands of miles wide, that goes around the Gulf of Alaska and into the waters around eastern Russia.

She said she was interested in studying the subpolar gyre for two reasons. The Gulf of Alaska provides critical habitat for Alaska’s fisheries. And she said it’s also interesting because of the way water circulates.

“The center of the subpolar gyre in Alaska, is extremely depleted in nutrients, especially micronutrients,” Beaudin said.

Those nutrients, like iron, silicate, and nitrate, are essential for phytoplankton, which are the base of the food chain that feeds everything else in the ocean. Beaudin said the phytoplankton living in the nutrient-depleted areas survive because of eddies, which are smaller rotating swirls inside of the gyre.

Read the full article at KMXT

El Niño is coming for the economy

September 22, 2026 —  A powerful El Niño is strengthening in the Pacific, and its economic effects are already starting to show. The World Meteorological Organization expects it to strengthen further and peak near the end of the year, with an almost 100% chance that it will persist through February.

The reason markets care is that El Niño does not stay in the Pacific. It is a shift in the atmosphere system that spreads warm water eastward across the more tropical sections of the Pacific, weakening the trade winds that normally push warm surface water toward Asia.

That changes where heat and moisture accumulate, disrupting the jet stream and shifting rainfall, drought, heat and storms across different regions. For a global economy already dealing with climate change, wars and political upheaval, El Niño is mostly another headache. But not everywhere, and not for everyone.

Read the full article at Quartz

2026’s El Niño is shaping up to be a doozy – it’s already affecting global shipping, fish behavior and heat

September 14, 2026 — El Niño is here, and forecasters warn that it’s likely to be bigger and stronger in 2026-27 than any El Niño event recorded in at least 150 years.

During strong El Niños, global air and ocean temperatures spike, and precipitation patterns shift dramatically – flooding rains deluge places that are normally dry, and drought strikes some of the wettest locations on earth. With this El Niño arriving on top of already high global ocean and air temperatures, it carries the potential for extraordinary impacts to millions of lives throughout the world. Globally, August 2026 was the hottest month on record, according to data from Europe’s Copernicus climate service.

Those effects are already showing up in Central and South America.

Fishing crews in Ecuador are catching fewer tuna and traveling farther from shore to find them as fish migrate to cooler water. Coral reefs are under alert for severe risk of bleaching in many areas.

In Panama, where I live, seabirds common to Ecuador and Peru known as blue-footed boobies began showing up in large numbers in Panama earlier than usual as the sardines and anchovies they eat moved northward to escape the El Niño ocean heat.

Farmers in some regions of Panama have been unable to plant their crops. And many people here are worried about access to drinking water in the coming dry season, normally January to April but predicted to arrive at least a month earlier than usual.

The global economy is also beginning to see far-reaching effects. Worsening drought is reducing the amount of water needed to operate the Panama Canal, resulting in fewer ships with less cargo able to pass through in a day. That leads to higher transit costs for shippers of all kinds of products and slower deliveries.

I am a biologist who has been monitoring the weather in Panama and surrounding regions for the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute for almost 40 years. That includes major climatic events such as El Niño, and what I am seeing in Panama in 2026 in terms of heat and drought has already begun to exceed anything that we have measured here in over a century.

Read the full article at The Conservation

NOAA sends Saildrones on mission to track El Niño

September 9, 2026 — A quartet of uncrewed surface vehicles are navigating 1,500 miles to the center of a historic El Niño gathering strength in the eastern Pacific, on a four-month mission to collect data on the warm-water impulse altering global weather patterns.

Two orange Saildrone Explorer 23′ USVs sailed Aug. 21 from Honolulu, carrying meteorological and oceanographic sensors and rendezvousing  with two other Saildrones on a 6,000-mile round-trip mission for NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory (PMEL) according to a summary from the agency.

“A monumental El Niño is knocking at the door,” said Michael McPhaden, former PMEL senior scientist now working with NOAA’s Cooperative Institute for Climate, Ocean, and Ecosystem Studies (CICOES). “We’re going to take a closer look.”

The USVs will steer courses through the Tropical Pacific Observing System, a multi-national array of data-collecting moored surface buoys that provide continuous, real-time hourly tracking of surface winds, air temperature, humidity, and upper-ocean temperature down to 1,640’. Argo floats collect ocean profiles down to 1.24 miles every 10 days.

Distributed throughout the array are drifting buoys measuring sea surface temperature and currents. Overhead, satellites track the drifters and capture surface observations across wide areas.

Read the full article at Workboat 

Ocean Indicators We’re Tracking for El Niño’s Arrival on the West Coast

September 5, 2026 — Has El Niño reached the West Coast?

You might think it has. After all, the ocean off Southern and Central California is unusually warm. But that is from a recent marine heatwave predates the current El Niño. Much of the Pacific Coast is experiencing relatively normal conditions while still awaiting the impacts of what could be a very strong El Niño.

In June, NOAA’s National Weather Service declared that El Niño had developed. That finding, however, is based on ocean temperatures from the tropical Pacific Ocean, near the Equator, which warm ahead of El Niño’s impact on the Americas.

While eastern tropical Pacific temperatures have already risen more than 2°C (about 3.6°F) above normal, El Niño-related warming along the West Coast typically lags that increase by a few months. NOAA Fisheries scientists are tracking West Coast conditions as part of our Integrated Ecosystem Assessment. Here are some of the changes in ocean conditions and marine life that typically signal the arrival of El Niño’s influence along the West Coast.

Read the full article at NOAA Fisheries

Two giant warming patterns are brewing in the Pacific and warping US weather

September 2, 2026 — In the north-east Pacific Ocean, an immense and persistent heatwave is wreaking havoc on marine life and weather patterns.

“It’s a really bright red eyeball in the Pacific,” says Andrew Leising, a research oceanographer at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa). “It’s huge, it stretches across the whole [ocean].” The Pacific heatwave, which formed in May 2025, is already bringing surface temperatures 3-4C (5.4-7.2F) above average for this time of year, according to Leising.

Add to that: a massive warming pattern known as El Niño is brewing further south. El Niño is a weather phenomenon that pushes up global temperatures, and it is also supercharging Pacific Ocean warming. It is expected to intensify this autumn to become the strongest El Niño in living memory.

This combination of a massive marine heatwave and a “super El Niño” is rarely seen. Here are five impacts we can expect to see – and where they will happen.

Read the full article at the BBC

El Niño is disrupting the Pacific’s marine food web from the bottom up

August 27, 2026 — As the 2026 El Niño strengthens in the equatorial Pacific, satellites are capturing the first major signs of disruption to the marine food web.

According to by NASA’s Earth Observatory observations, satellite measurements show a substantial drop in surface concentrations of chlorophyll across the Central Pacific compared with neutral conditions in June 2025. Chlorophyll is the pigment that helps plants absorbs sunlight to generate energy, and its reduction indicates a decline in phytoplankton, the base of the ocean’s food webs.

Hyung-Gyu Lim, an associate professor of oceanography at Chonnam National University in South Korea, told Mongabay by email that a developing El Niño can slow the process of upwelling, where nutrient-rich cold waters rise from the ocean depths to the surface. “This may trigger less nutrient supply. It is not surprising for me,” Lim said.

Read the full article at Mongabay

Earth is simmering in its hottest water temps on record, and that’s bad for fish and us

August 25, 2026 — The world’s oceans simmered to their hottest temperatures on record over the weekend and are likely to warm even further in the next few months, putting stress on life in the water and on land too, the European climate service Copernicus announced Monday.

Spurred by a still growing but already supersized natural El Nino and human-caused climate change, the world’s ocean temperatures hit 21.1 degrees Celsius (70 degrees Fahrenheit) on Friday and Saturday, narrowly edging out the average daily record set in March 2024, said Samantha Burgess, strategic climate lead for Copernicus.

“This is yet another sign of our climate system under strain and the ocean under immense pressure,” Burgess said.

Jane Lubchenco, an oceanographer and former chief of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration called the record “very troubling.”

“An ocean this warm destabilizes weather patterns and threatens food security, economic prosperity and marine life,” Lubchenco said in an email. “A warmer ocean is not our friend.”

Read the full article at Associated Press

IFFO reports weak fishmeal and fish oil output as El Niño impacts fisheries

August 20, 2026 — IFFO – the Marine Ingredients Organization is reporting continued weak output of fishmeal and fish oil as a coastal El Niño weather pattern impacts raw material availability.

Scientists warned in July that a “Super” El Niño was likely to develop in 2026, causing a wave of different impacts on multiple global fisheries. Fisheries were already anticipating the phenomenon before it started to gain strength but, ultimately, could do little but react to warming water.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

El Niño could bring highest sea levels ever recorded to CA coast

August 11, 2026 — A strengthening El Niño could bring the highest sea levels ever recorded to the California coast this year, raising the risk of widespread and damaging flooding.

It’s the latest effect forecast for what’s expected to be an historically strong event, one forecasters warn could also lash Southern California with powerful rain and broil both land and sea with punishing heat waves.

“We’re expecting likely the highest sea levels ever recorded on the California coast associated with this event,” said Mark Merrifield, director of the UC San Diego Scripps Institution of Oceanography’s Center for Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation.

During a recent online town hall, Merrifield presented a NASA satellite image showing sea levels already more than half a foot higher in the eastern Pacific Ocean compared to the reference state, and said by this fall and winter, “we should be seeing sea levels far above the average seasonal cycle.”

According to NASA, El Niño’s warmer ocean water displaces colder water close to the sea surface. Warmer water causes a rise in the sea surface height because water expands as temperature rises.

Data collected by scientists over the years also have shown how El Niños contribute to “enormously strong” waves, which can cause beaches to “erode and to narrow,” Merrifield said. “It’s well documented that during El Niño events, beaches across the entire state tend to move landward by about 30 meters [98 feet] or so.”

Read the full article at the Seattle Times