The massive, unprecedented bloom this year that extended from the Santa Barbara to Alaska is linked to the presence of the "Blob" of extremely warm water (sensu Nick Bond @ JSIAO, Univ of Washington) in the N. Pacific that began to appear in late 2013. This warm water anomaly in the ocean has been atmospherically linked with the resilient high pressure system that has helped the severe drought persist. In the oceans though, this warm water has pushed up against the coast and caused the entire ecosystem to change from 2014 until now. Pseudo-nitzschia bloomed this year in response to coastal upwelling, as it always does, but due to a decline in the level of nutrients that were upwelled near the coast and because the waters from SB northward were warm but not too warm, the very toxic species Pseudo-nitzchia australis flourished. The warm waters also seemed to have prevented the bloom from dissipating and moving offshore as we normally see after several weeks to a month following a Pseudo-nitzschia bloom. The food web was so negatively affected because of the persistence of this bloom. The crab closure appears to be related to the residual domoic acid that has sunk into the sediments following the 5 months of bloom this summer. We have not seen new DA production in surface waters for at least a month or two. Now that El Niño is starting to arrive in California in the form of very warm, subsurface water and it is happening at a time when the waters are already reaching unprecedented temperatures, it will be very interesting to see how the ecosystem responds, but it will also be hard to predict if this will favor another bloom or not. We can say that after the transition to La Niña next spring, another large bloom is very likely. If the Pacific warming over the last 2 years (i.e. the blob) is any harbinger of things to come, then we may start to see even stronger, longer domoic acid events in response to spring and summer upwelling that happens in conjunction with generally warm water and moderate nutrient levels.