MOVING TARGET: Ocean areas set aside for protection may not work as fish populations migrate in response to global warming.
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CHICAGO—Climate change has undermined fundamental assumptions about oceanic conservation, challenging the notion that today’s sanctuaries will protect tomorrow’s fish.
Conservationists have long assumed fish harvested at a sustainable rate will forever be available for future generations.
Instead, scientists now find that a warming ocean is mobilizing fish populations, sending them to the poles with little regard for marine preserve boundaries. Many of the areas set aside for fish protection are the most vulnerable to climate change, scientists say.
“This basic belief behind conservation is no longer the case,” said Emily Pidgeon of Conservation International, speaking at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Conservationists must adapt their management plans to that poleward shift, Pidgeon said.
On average, fish are expected to migrate 25 miles per decade, according to a new study led by William Cheung of the University of East Anglia.
"Our research shows that the impact of climate change on marine biodiversity and fisheries is going to be huge," Cheung said. "We must act now to adapt our fisheries management and conservation policies to minimize harm to marine life and to our society.”
The oceans are suffering from “a pretty significant overdose of temperature, acidification and nutrients,” said Patrick Halpin, director of the Geospatial Analysis Program at Duke University.
Worse, climate models predict that the areas where marine preserves are most prevalent—coastal regions in the northern hemisphere—will see greater increases in temperature than the oceans as a whole, Halpin said.
Those same areas are also especially susceptible to other environmental disturbances, like nutrients from agricultural runoff, which can create oxygen-depleted “dead zones” where most marine life can’t survive.
According to Pidgeon, inflexible political boundaries are ill-suited to protecting fish in our rapidly changing seas, and conservationists must find a way to include species migration in their strategies.
“This stuff’s critical to conservation in the future,” she said.
This article originally ran at The Daily Climate, the climate change news source published by Environmental Health Sciences, a nonprofit media company.
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7 Comments
Add CommentThis is a sophmoric article, because ocean conservation is essencially irrelivant:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/11/02/health/webmd/main2147223.shtml
Salt-Water Fish Extinction Seen By 2048
Study By Ecologists, Economists Predicts Collapse of World Ocean Ecology
The apocalypse has a new date: 2048.
That's when the world's oceans will be empty of fish, predicts an international team of ecologists and economists. The cause: the disappearance of species due to overfishing, pollution, habitat loss, and climate change.
The study by Boris Worm, PhD, of Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, -- with colleagues in the U.K., U.S., Sweden, and Panama -- was an effort to understand what this loss of ocean species might mean to the world.
The researchers analyzed several different kinds of data. Even to these ecology-minded scientists, the results were an unpleasant surprise.
"I was shocked and disturbed by how consistent these trends are -- beyond anything we suspected," Worm says in a news release.
"This isn't predicted to happen. This is happening now," study researcher Nicola Beaumont, PhD, of the Plymouth Marine Laboratory, U.K., says in a news release.
"If biodiversity continues to decline, the marine environment will not be able to sustain our way of life. Indeed, it may not be able to sustain our lives at all," Beaumont adds.
Already, 29% of edible fish and seafood species have declined by 90% -- a drop that means the collapse of these fisheries.
But the issue isn't just having seafood on our plates. Ocean species filter toxins from the water. They protect shorelines. And they reduce the risks of algae blooms such as the red tide.
"A large and increasing proportion of our population lives close to the coast; thus the loss of services such as flood control and waste detoxification can have disastrous consequences," Worm and colleagues say.
http://www.environmental-expert.com/resultEachPressRelease.aspx?cid=6712&codi=38817&idproducttype=8&level=0
Scientists confirm oceans acidifying at unprecedented speed
The acidification of the world’s oceans, caused by the absorption of huge volumes of carbon dioxide, is accelerating at an unprecedented rate, threatening marine ecosystems and the livelihoods of tens of millions of people, concluded scientists attending the Second International Symposium on the Ocean in a High CO2 World held in Monaco from 6-9 October. The meeting, attended by 250 marine scientists from 32 countries, was organized by UNESCO’s Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission, the Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research (SCOR), the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the International Geosphere Biosphere Programme (IGBP), with the support of the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation and several other partners.
“Our oceans are sick. We don’t quite know how sick, but there is enough evidence now for us to say that ocean chemistry in changing, that as a result some marine organisms will be affected, and that decision makers need to sit up and take notice,” said James Orr of the IAEA and Chairman of the meeting.
Yes Doberman, Sea organisms do filter toxins of human origin which the food chains concentrate. So we end up eating all our toxic wastes.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is the scenario of "Tragedy of the commons" written by late Professor Garrett Hardin and this is the 'Invisible Foot' that kick human in the rear vs Adams Smith 'Invisible Hands' that prospered the economy/human population. There is a only way out that is to reduce human population, we either do it by law or the nature will balance us.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHuman population is always a taboo in politics and religion, nobody want to talk about it and the politicians want to cheer the religious people to do so they are always 'pro-life' while they did not think they are actually participating in destroying our living environment.
In conclusion, if high human population will bring more happiness then China and India should be the Happiest Country in the world and Africa, Indonesia are close third and fourth.
How about overfishing being the real culprit? Whay do we need to invoke a fairy tale like AGW when we should be telling countries to stop overfishing?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis article is exactly the type thing that bothers me about the AGW myth: it distracts and obfuscates real issues with false ones.
What amazes me so much is that AGW "skeptics" are so cynical they even doubt the straight forward fact that elevated CO2 in the air acidifies the ocean. Yeah Shoshin, ocean acidification is a myth.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"How about overfishing being the real culprit? Why do we need to invoke a fairy tale like AGW when we should be telling countries to stop overfishing?"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe need to stop overfishing AND we need to curb man made global warming. Instead of spending so much time trying to convince people that global warming is a myth (something you are failing horribly at by the way) why don't you try learning more about the subject than that "one graph" that you find so convincing.
Why coastal regions in the northern hemisphere will greater increases in temperature than the oceans as a whole?
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