Weathering the Storm: Effects of a Hurricane‐Induced Thermal Disturbance on a Juvenile Atlantic Halibut ( Hippoglossus hippoglossus ) Hotspot in Nova Scotia, Canada

Atlantic Halibut has recently become the most valuable groundfish in Atlantic Canada following population recovery, and the benthic habitat characteristics of their aggregation areas have been identified as a key outstanding ecological knowledge gap for the species. In 2022, during a multi‐year acoustic tracking study in a key juvenile hotspot at the head of the Gully submarine canyon on the edge of the eastern Scotian Shelf, a major hurricane passed near the study site. This event resulted in a rapid and long‐lasting thermal disturbance from storm‐induced vertical mixing of the stratified water column. A significant interaction between halibut size and temperature in an autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) regression on the number of halibut in the array shows that the high temperatures following the hurricane were associated with a decrease in larger (≥ 81 cm) halibut and an increase in smaller (< 81 cm) halibut beyond what is usually observed in the study site. This study presents a rare look at the response of a cold‐water demersal species to a powerful high‐latitude hurricane and underlines the importance of monitoring ambient environmental conditions during a tracking study.