Climate change problems: Moving homes?
Knock-on effects
- Fish in the Gulf of Alaska ride out unusually hot weather by shifting to deeper waters. When this happened in 1993, 120,000 seabirds starved to death, most likely because they could not dive deep enough to catch their relocated prey.
- In some cases, fish living in warmer waters are less valuable to fishers than those living in colder water. Thus fisheries will be negatively affected as cold-loving fish move out of some areas and are replaced by warm-water species.
Like all life, marine species have evolved to cope with their local conditions - which includes water temperature. As the oceans warm, the location of the ideal water temperature may shift for many species.
For example, one study has shown that fish in the North Sea have moved further north or into deeper water in response to rising sea temperatures.Other species may lose their homes for other reasons. The distribution of penguin species in the Antarctic Peninsula region, for example, is changing with reductions in sea ice due to global warming.
All in all, areas currently teeming with life may see a huge drop in biodiversity, while other areas that were formerly species-poor may become ideal locations for certain habitats and species.
This could have a huge impact on Marine Protected Areas. It may be necessary to shift protected areas to keep up with moving habitat and ecosystem priorities - a daunting task to say the least.
Some species may not be able to move, and could face extinction. And if humans have already taken a new desirable location, there maybe nowhere for marine "climate refugees" to move to.
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