Heterotrophic protists play significant roles in pelagic food webs as bacterivorous and herbivorous consumers. However, heterotrophic protists—unlike autotrophic ones—are often difficult to track since they tend to lack features such as photosynthetic pigments that allow for remote sensing or for bulk characterization. Difficulty in the identification of heterotrophic protists has often resulted in lumping them into broad groups, but there is a strong need to develop methods that increase the spatial and temporal resolution of observations applied to particular organisms in order to discover the drivers of population structure and ecological function. In surveys of small subunit rRNA, gene (SSU) sequences of microbial eukaryotes from the Columbia River to the Pacific Ocean, the heterotrophic flagellate Katablepharis sp. were found to dominate protist assemblages (including autotrophic and heterotrophic fractions) in the spring, prior to the freshet. We discovered a 332 base pair unique sequence element (USE) insertion in the large subunit rRNA gene (28S) that is not present in other katablepharids or in any other eukaryote. Using this USE, we were able to detect Katablepharis within mixed assemblages in river, estuarine, and oceanic samples and determine spatial and temporal patterns in absolute abundance through quantitative PCR and fluorescence in situ hybridization. Given their high abundance and repeatable temporal patterns of occurrence, we hypothesize that the Columbia River Estuary Katablepharis (Katablepharis CRE) plays an important role in estuarine biogeochemical and ecosystem function.