Significant shifts in coastal zooplankton populations through the 2015/16 Tasman Sea marine heatwave

The waters east of Tasmania, Australia, are warming at a rate 3–4 times the global average, largely as a result of the increasing duration and frequency of the southward penetration of the East Australia Current (EAC). In 2015/16, the southward movement of this sub-tropical current caused a severe marine heatwave (MHW) event. The effects of this event on the abundance and structure of the zooplankton community of south-east Tasmania are examined between November 2015 and January 2018. Generalized additive models indicated temperature to be significantly correlated with total zooplankton abundance (R2 = 0.6, p