THE SOUTH CHANNEL OCEAN PRODUCTIVITY EXPERIMENT

The South Channel Ocean Productivity Experiment (SCOPEX) was a multidi sciplinary study of a whale-zooplankton predator-prey system in the so uthwestern Gulf of Maine, focusing on the oceanographic factors respon sible for the development of dense patches of the copepod Calanus finm archicus, which comprise the major prey resource for right whales (Eub alaena glacialis). Three non-mutually exclusive hypotheses underlay th e study: patch development is due to (1) extremely high in situ primar y and secondary productivity; (2) large numbers of Calanus advected in to the region and concentrated by hydrographic processes; and/or (3) a behavioral tendency of the copepods themselves to aggregate. The resu lts confirmed the cooccurrence of right whales with high density Calan us patches, and also demonstrated that right whales fed on patches wit h higher proportions of larger lifestages. The physical oceanographic studies supported the advection hypothesis, possibly augmented by a te ndency of Calanus to aggregate, but there was little evidence to suppo rt the productivity hypothesis.