investigated the community structure of
mesozooplankton in the western Sea of Okhotsk during the late
summer of 2006. They recognized four distinct communities of
zooplankton: an estuary community; a gulf community through
Sakhalin Gulf to the east coast of Sakhalin, acontinental shelf community
on the continental shelf located in north of Sakhalin, a continental
slope community on the continental slope through north
to east of Sakhalin and a basin community through the central part
of the Okhotsk Sea to the Pacific side of the Kuril Islands. Judging
from community structure and distribution, they suggest that the
distribution pattern of mesozooplankton communities depends
on the current system and the seafloor topography. Finally they
concluded that the Okhotsk Sea is like a miniature of the arctic–
subarctic region of the North Pacific because the copepod communities
were consisted of Arctic, subarctic and neritic species in a
relatively small area