A study has found that warmer waters off North America’s West Coast caused many kinds of sea life to move farther north than ever before. The study was a project of scientists from the University of California, Davis. Their findings were reported in the online publication Scientific Reports. The scientists examined waters off the coast of Northern California in the eastern Pacific Ocean. The researchers say they identified a total of 67 species between 2014 and 2016, during what was described as a marine heatwave. Marine heatwaves were defined in the study as periods of extreme sea surface temperatures lasting for days to months. The 2014-2016 heatwave is thought to be the largest ever recorded. The report says this weather event began in 2013 when a warm-water blob formed in the Gulf of Alaska.
