And figuring out what's on the move is turning into a full-time job. For the first time in recent memory, researchers have documented juvenile great white sharks migrating from warm water nursery habitats in Southern California to waters near Monterey Bay. This while another predator species, Sunflower Sea Stars, nearly vanished in another ocean warming episode. Their loss triggered a population explosion in competing purple sea urchins, which are now devouring coastal Kelp forests.
Low says an earlier wave of the floating ocean creatures drifted in before the last El Nino as well -- exactly the kind of data the Snapshot program is designed to track."We can use them in models to figure out how animals change with different environmental conditions and over time, and kind of project that onto the future to see. You know, to predict what might happen to them with climate change," Low said.