Disease-driven mass mortality event leads to widespread extirpation and variable recovery potential of a marine predator across the eastern Pacific

Thirty research groups from Canada, the United States, Mexico, including First Nations, shared 34 datasets containing field surveys of Pycnopodia (Table S1). The data included 48,810 surveys from 1967 to 2020 derived from trawls, remotely operated vehicles, SCUBA dives, and intertidal surveys. We compiled survey data into a standardized format that included at minimum the coordinates, date, depth, area surveyed, and occurrence of Pycnopodia for each survey. When datasets contained more than one survey at a site in the same day (e.g. multiple transects), we divided the total Pycnopodia count in all surveys by the total survey area and averaged the latitude, longitude, and depth as necessary. Using breaks in data coverage, political boundaries, and biogeographic breaks we assigned each survey to one of twelve regions: Aleutian Islands, west Gulf of Alaska (GOA), east Gulf of Alaska, southeast Alaska, British Columbia (excluding the Salish Sea), Salish Sea (including the Puget Sound), Washington outer coast (excluding the Puget Sound), Oregon, northern California, central California, southern California, and the Pacific coast of Baja California (Fig. S1; see Supplementary Material).