OCEAN
OF TROUBLE
tors consider to be overfished in the U.S.
But scientists are also mindful that 150
years of carbon pollution have begun to
break down and reassemble the undersea environment in ways we do not fully
understand. Indeed, for all the concern
over the impacts of global warming on
land-based agriculture, forests and glaciers, the oceans are at the front lines of
the climate assault, becoming increasingly acidic and absorbing as much as
80 percent of the additional heat being
generated by the greenhouse effect.
Given that cod development and ecology is so dependent on water temperature,
one analysis has predicted that if bottom
temperatures in the Gulf of Maine rise
just one degree Celsius in coming decades,
THEY PROJECT
SOME FISH AS BEING
ABUNDANT BUT WE
CAN’T CATCH THEM.
THEY PROJECT THE
OTHERS AS BEING
SCARCE AND WE
CAN’T GET AWAY
FROM THEM.”
HUFFINGTON
06.23.13
yields of the fish could drop by 21 percent.
A one-degree uptick from that would reduce cod catch by as much as 43 percent,
and higher temperatures would likely
drive the fish out of the area completely.
At the end of April, NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center reported
that sea surface temperatures on the
Northeast continental shelf — which
runs roughly from Cape Hatteras, N.C.,
on up through the Gulf of Maine — had
reached their highest level in 150 years
of recording. The change, the agency
noted, appeared to be impacting distributions over the whole stretch — from
black sea bass, summer flounder and
longfin squid to butterfish, American
lobster and, of course, haddock and cod.
But scientists and regulators still don’t
have a good handle on how the full array
of new climate-driven variables — rising
temperatures, changing currents, shifting thermal layers, increasing acidity —
are combining to alter the ecosystems in
which our favorite seafood items live and
breed. “It isn’t always easy to understand
the big picture when you are looking at
one specific part of it at one specific point
in time,” said Michael Fogarty, who heads
the Ecosystem Assessment Program at
NFSC, in a statement accompanying the
historic temperature data.
“What these latest findings mean for
the Northeast Shelf ecosystem and its
marine life is unknown,” Fogarty said.
“What is known is that the ecosystem is
changing, and we need to continue monitoring and adapting to these changes.”