In the much-higher water temperatures that lingered in the 2014-19 period, juvenile chum salmon metabolism was super-charged, meaning they needed more food, said the study, by scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. But the food that was available was of low quality — things like jellyfish instead of the fatpacked krill and other prey they normally eat, the study said.

New research shows the marine heat wave that spread from California to Alaska starting in 2014 caused common murres to starve to death.

Short-tailed shearwaters breed in the areas off Australia. They come to Alaska to gorge on krill, tiny copepods, fish and a variety of other marine food. Shearwaters that were not dead were found to be extremely weakened, some of them trying to eat scraps from Bering Sea fishermen’s nets.

In a paper published Wednesday, researchers theorize the die-off is at least partially attributable to the changing climate.

A meteorologist says unseasonably warm weather in B.C. is once again causing a large area of the Pacific Ocean to heat up considerably, emulating a phenomenon from past years known as the “blob.”