Effect of demographic noise in a phytoplankton-zooplankton model of bloom dynamics

An extension of the Truscott-Brindley model (Bull. Math. Biol. {\bf 56}, 981 (1994)) is derived to account for the effect of demographic fluctuations. In the presence of seasonal forcing, and sufficiently shallow water conditions, the fluctuations induced by the discreteness of the zooplankton component appear sufficient to cause switching between the bloom and no-bloom cycle predicted at the mean-field level by the model. The destabilization persists in the thermodynamic limit of a water basin infinitely extended in the horizontal direction.