The South Channel Ocean Productivity EXperiment

The South Channel Ocean Productivity EXperiment (SCOPEX) was a multidisciplinary study of a whale-zooplankton predator-prey system in the southwestern Gulf of Maine, focusing on the oceanographic factors responsible for the development of dense patches of the copepod Calanus finmarchicus, which comprise the major prey resource for right whales (Eubalaena glacialis). Three non-mutually exclusive hypotheses underlay the study: patch development is due to (1) extremely high in situ primary and secondary productivity; (2) large numbers of Calanus advected into the region and concentrated by hydrographic processes; and/or (3) a behavioral tendency of the copepods themselves to aggregate. The results confirmed the cooccurrence of right whales with high density Calanus patches, and also demonstrated that right whales fed on patches with higher proportions of larger lifestages. The physical oceanographic studies supported the advection hypothesis, possibly augmented by a tendency of Calanus to aggregate, but there was little evidence to support the productivity hypothesis.