• About
    • Which Energy Mix is this?
  • Climate News Network Archive
  • Contact
The climate news that makes a difference.
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
  FEATURED
BP Predicts Faster Oil and Gas Decline as Clean Energy Spending Hits $1.1T in 2022 January 31, 2023
Canada Needs Oil and Gas Emissions Cap to Hit 2030 Goal: NZAB January 31, 2023
Ecuador’s Amazon Drilling Plan Shows Need for Fossil Non-Proliferation Treaty January 31, 2023
Rainforest Carbon Credits from World’s Biggest Provider are ‘Largely Worthless’, Investigation Finds January 31, 2023
Danske Bank Quits New Fossil Fuel Financing January 23, 2023
Next
Prev

Hotter oceans harm seabed life survival prospects

September 14, 2020
Reading time: 3 minutes
Primary Author: Tim Radford

 

Seabed life is tough: only the young can migrate. But climate change is taking many of them the wrong way.

LONDON, 14 September, 2020 – It can be hard being a junior part of seabed life – a young starfish, say, or an adolescent worm. Down in the ocean depths, the environment is conspiring against you.

  • The climate news you need. Subscribe now to our engaging new weekly digest.
  • You’ll receive exclusive, never-before-seen-content, distilled and delivered to your inbox every weekend.
  • The Weekender: Succinct, solutions-focused, and designed with the discerning reader in mind.
New!
Subscribe

Marine biologists have just identified – and explained – a climate change paradox: while most fish are migrating towards the poles as the world’s oceans warm, one part of a potentially valuable commercial fishery is heading in the wrong direction – and perhaps to extinction.

Why? Once again, the finger of suspicion points to global climate change, and its impact on ocean tides and currents.

Throughout this century, researchers have repeatedly confirmed a pattern of ocean warming – and acidification – driven by ever-rising ratios of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere; a pattern that could affect both established commercial fishing industries and ocean life as a whole.

Tropical fish have been shifting away from the equator; further north and south, pelagic (open-ocean) and demersal (seabed-dwelling) fish have been seeking more suitable grounds. Warmer seas can affect spawning patterns.

“As the seas continue to warm, spawning times will get ever earlier and the currents will sweep many of the next generation to oblivion”

But the ocean is a vast living space, and the speed at which it warms tends to vary with depth.

US researchers report in the journal Nature Climate Change that they worked through 60 years of data on 50 species of benthic invertebrates – creatures without backbones that dwell on the sea floor – to find that the populations of four-fifths of these had begun to disappear from the shelves and fishing grounds of the Georges Bank and the outer shelf that runs from New Jersey and east of the Delmarva Peninsula occupied by the states of Delaware, Maryland and Virginia.

More to the point, they identified the mechanism that had begun to limit life on the submarine sediments. Bottom-dwellers – shellfish, snails, starfish, worms and so on – can’t migrate: they are stuck where they are. But their larvae can, and at spawning time the infant shellfish are at the mercy of the ocean currents.

The waters of the north-east Atlantic coast are warming at three times the global average rate. Warming has affected the time at which benthic invertebrates spawn. Because the larvae appear earlier in spring and summer, they are swept away by currents they would not encounter in a cooler, more stable world.

And these currents, driven by river discharge and seasonal winds, tend to bring them south-west and inshore, where waters are warmer and the larvae are even less likely to survive.

Nowhere to go

Those adults that remain are stuck where they are: as the seas continue to warm, spawning times will get ever earlier and the currents will sweep many of the next generation to oblivion.

These bottom-dwelling denizens could survive, if they could colonise cooler waters. Instead they are condemned to a submarine version of what terrestrial biologists call the elevator to extinction: on land, hotter temperatures drive birds and butterflies and plants ever further uphill: in the end, nearer the summit, there’s nowhere to go.

The researchers, from Rutgers University in New Brunswick, call it the downwelling effect, and identify a paradox: as the area habitable by bottom-dwellers gets bigger, their ranges dwindle.

The finding so far is true only for the north-east Atlantic waters, and some species seem less affected. Scallops could flourish, because they spawn at a wider range of temperatures. But clams and mussels are adapted to low temperatures, and their ranges have warmed and contracted.

And, the scientists warn, as global heating reduces yields from traditional fisheries, the seafood industry is likely to rely increasingly on shellfish. But this industry, too, is vulnerable to ocean change. – Climate News Network



in Climate News Network

The latest climate news and analysis, direct to your inbox

Subscribe

Related Posts

U.S. Geological Survey/wikimedia commons
Biodiversity & Habitat

Climate Change Amplifies Risk of ‘Insect Apocalypse’

December 1, 2022
43
Alaa Abd El-Fatah/wikimedia commons
COP Conferences

Rights Abuses, Intrusive Conference App Put Egypt Under Spotlight as COP 27 Host

November 14, 2022
26
Western Arctic National Parklands/wikimedia commons
Arctic & Antarctica

Arctic Wildfires Show Approach of New Climate Feedback Loop

January 2, 2023
28

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

I agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy.

Trending Stories

Ken Teegardin www.SeniorLiving.Org/flickr

Virtual Power Plants Hit an ‘Inflection Point’

January 31, 2023
125
Mike Mozart/Flickr

BP Predicts Faster Oil and Gas Decline as Clean Energy Spending Hits $1.1T in 2022

January 31, 2023
324
Sam Balto/YouTube

Elementary School’s Bike Bus Brings ‘Sheer Joy’ to Portland Neighbourhood

October 16, 2022
259
Lucio Santos/flickr

Canadian Banks Increased Fossil Investment in 2021, Report Card Shows

November 27, 2022
115
Gina Dittmer/PublicDomainPictures

Canada Needs Oil and Gas Emissions Cap to Hit 2030 Goal: NZAB

January 31, 2023
196
Massachusetts Clean Energy Center/flickr

Ivey Foundation Pledges $100M to Speed Emission Cuts, Will Close in 2027

December 1, 2022
32

Recent Posts

CONFENIAE

Ecuador’s Amazon Drilling Plan Shows Need for Fossil Non-Proliferation Treaty

January 31, 2023
61
/snappy goat

Rainforest Carbon Credits from World’s Biggest Provider are ‘Largely Worthless’, Investigation Finds

January 31, 2023
94
Victorgrigas/wikimedia commons

World Bank Climate Reforms Too ‘Timid and Slow,’ Critics Warn

January 31, 2023
42
Doc Searls/Twitter

Guilbeault Could Intervene on Ontario Greenbelt Development

January 31, 2023
132
United Nations

Salvage of $20B ‘Floating Time Bomb’ Delayed by Rising Cost of Oil Tankers

January 27, 2023
121
RL0919/wikimedia commons

Danske Bank Quits New Fossil Fuel Financing

January 23, 2023
2.4k
Next Post

Mass migration set to increase as world warms

The Energy Mix - The climate news you need

Copyright 2023 © Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy Policy and Copyright
  • Cookie Policy

Proudly partnering with…

scf_withtagline
No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities

Copyright 2022 © Smarter Shift Inc. and Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

Manage Cookie Consent
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behaviour or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Manage options Manage services Manage vendors Read more about these purposes
View preferences
{title} {title} {title}