Decadal variability in abundances of the dominant euphausiid species in southern sectors of the California Current

Euphausiid abundance data from broadly based California Cooperative Oceanic Fisheries Investigation surveys in California and Baja California sectors of the California Current provided a time series distinguishing periodic, rhythmic and irregular species patterns. Comparisons with environmental indexes indicate significant correlations with warm-water species, most notably in coastal Nyctiphanes simplex. Oceanic warm-water species were similarly, but less extremely, allied with an index. Coastal warm-water N. simplex was uncommon off southern California before the atmospheric regime shift of the 1970s. It assumed a post-1978 pattern of rhythmic biannual abundance increases and decreases during 1981-2000. The near-tropical oceanic Euphausia eximia and Pacific Central subtropicals patterned similarly, but was more periodic than rhythmic. Euphausia pacifica, the most dominant and broadly ranging Euphausia species, peaked at irregular but distinct bi-decadal abundances during 6 strong La Nina episodes. The peaks uniformly collapsed by 90%, becoming El Nino-associated minima. The cold-water coastal northern species Thysanoessa spinifera frequently ranged far south off Baja California before 1960 but became limited to Central California in the 1980s. The importance of T spinifera off the Californias is small compared with northern regions, but it extends to southern upwelling centers contributing to dominance, here, by cold-water euphausiids. Decadal periodicity of species abundances decreased in the 1990s, when trends became more common. Differences among sectors were minimal between the two Californias, but were often distinct between southern California and Central Baja California. Species abundances, comparing pre- and post-climate shift species averages, differed insignificantly for all species when logarithmic values were used. With arithmetic values, most 1977-1998 average values were the greater, but with large standard deviations. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.