It was sometime in the mid-1960s, while spending a rainy Saturday afternoon in our wood paneled rec-room, switching channels on our rabbit ear adorned television, that I first encountered ‘The Blob’. ‘The Blob’ is a 1958 horror movie starring Steve McQueen in his first leading role. It tells the story of a gelatinous amoeba, encased in a meteorite, that crashed into a field near a small Pennsylvania town.

The first to find it was an older man who poked the meteorite with a stick, breaking it open, allowing a small amount of jelly to attach to his hand. The red mindless blob inexorably grew as it consumed first the man and then several of his townsfolk. The blob’s insatiable appetite and growth threatened to overwhelm the planet.

Steve McQueen discovered, by accident, that The Blob could not tolerate cold so a plan was hatched to freeze it with CO2 and transport The Blob to the arctic where it would remain alive, but frozen, ‘for as long as the Arctic remained cold’. The movie ended with the Blog frozen in the Arctic as ‘The End’ appeared on the screen, slowly morphing into a question mark.

Fisheries Advisor Greg Taylor

‘The Blob’ somehow entered our collective consciousness at a deep level, so now, generations later, people who have never seen or even heard of the movie recognize ‘The Blob’ as a potential existential threat.

I know many of my regular readers are asking themselves how I am going to take them from my younger gangly self wasting away a Saturday afternoon to talking about salmon. The connection is indeed ‘The Blob’ and unleashed changes in our environment that only writers of horror movies could envisage.

Most will remember the last time ‘The Blob’ became a media sensation. During 2013 and 2014, extending all the way into 2016, there was a marine heat wave that extended across the northern Pacific Ocean, leading to abrupt declines in abundance for many of our important salmon populations. Marine heatwaves like “The Blob” superheat the ocean, reducing oxygen and collapsing the cold-water food web. Salmon face less food, more parasites and predators, and higher stress, meaning fewer make it home.

Salmon, depending on the species and population, can spend one to four, or even five years, in the marine environment. Therefore, a salmon that entered the ocean at the height of the marine heat wave in 2014, if it survived, may not have returned until 2018. Further, the reduced number of spawners may well result in weaker future generations. Hence, a powerful marine heat wave can have a hangover that extends long after the heat wave ends. The 2013/14 blob was the largest marine heat wave in the historical record. However, there has since been a series of less intense marine heat waves in different portions of the North Pacific, including in 2024.

Figure: Sea surface temperature anomalies (℃) in the North Pacific Ocean as of Sept. 22, 2025.  Image: WeatherBell

What happened in the 2013-16 event is that ridging prevented this phenomenon, leading to the Pacific Ocean warming down to 300 meters. This immense reservoir of heat, coupled with an intense El Niño, led to the multi-year marine heat wave, colloquially referred to as ‘The Blob’.

The current marine heat wave has developed during a weak La Niña. While the future is still uncertain, many models are beginning to point to a waning of La Niña over this winter and the possible development of an El Niño phase. If this were to happen at a time when the average global temperature is much higher than it was a dozen years ago, when the ocean is already warmer than it was in 2013-16 and there is insufficient overwinter mixing, we could experience something worse than what our salmon limped through a dozen years ago.

Which brings me back to the movie ‘The Blob’, where the worst menace the world had ever faced was kept in check only for as long as the Arctic never warmed. If we allow our world to continue to warm, ‘The Blob’ is sure to escape and threaten our salmon once again.