Speakers: Leigh Torres, Kim Bernard, Susanne Brander, Lisa Hildebrand, and Sarah Henkel, COZI, Oregon State University

Topic:  Zoop to Poop: a collaborative effort to assess the caloric value and microparticle load in zooplankton prey of Oregon gray whales

In 2019 we established the Coastal Oregon Zooplankton Investigation (COZI). COZI is a cross-college collaborative effort that aims to improve our understanding of the quality of zooplankton in coastal Oregon that are primary prey of gray whales in this region. Across multiple summers, we collected zooplankton samples along the Oregon coast in known gray whale foraging locations. We subsequently classified zooplankton to species and life history phase, and assessed caloric content and microparticle load by zooplankton sub-group. In this talk we will share our results that demonstrate significant differences in caloric content and variation in microparticle loads and type between zooplankton groups. We also compare our zooplankton microparticle findings to microparticle loads in five fecal (poop) samples collected from gray whales feeding in the same region. Finally, we use gray whale consumption rates to extrapolate our caloric and microparticle results to estimate the amount of zooplankton and microparticles gray whales off Oregon consume in one day (teaser: it’s a lot!).