Linsey Sala

University of California, San Diego | UCSD · Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO)

Microplastics (< 5 mm) have long been a concern in marine debris research, but quantifying the smallest microplastics (< 333 μm) has been hampered by appropriate collection methods, like net tows. We modified standard epifluorescence microscopy methods to develop a new technique to enumerate < 333 μm microplastics (mini‐microplastics) from filtered...

Euphausiids are important prey for many marine organisms and often occur in patchy aggregations. Euphausiid predators, such as blue whales, may become concentrated in the vicinity of these aggregations. We investigated an area called Nine Mile Bank (NMB) near San Diego, California, defined by an area of steep bathymetry, to determine whether the fr...

We describe the mandibular morphology of the eight most abundant euphausiid species in the California Current and report regression relationships between mandible size and body total length. We applied these species-specific characters to the mandibles recovered from fecal samples of 18 blue whales (Balaenoptera musculus (Linnaeus, 1758)) collected...

Warm conditions in the North Pacific in 2014-15 were a result of the continuation of the North Pacific marine heat wave, a large area of exceptionally high SST anomalies that originated in the Gulf of Alaska in late 2013. The North Pacific heat wave interacted with an El Niño developing in the equatorial Pacific in 2015. Weekly periods of exception...