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Marine fish, invertebrates to disappear from tropics due to Rising Temperature

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In what could be termed as the worst effect of degrading climatic conditions and global warming, a new study has showed that fish in large numbers will disappear from the tropics by 2050.

The researchers at Canada’s University of British Columbia carried a study to examine how the climate change and rising temperatures are influencing fish stocks. During the study, they found that the rising temperatures are going to drive more fish into the waters of Antarctic and Arctic.

The study group incorporated the same climate change scenarios as applied by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in order to project a shift of marine fish and invertebrates on a large-scale.

If the oceans face worst scenarios and warm by three degrees Celsius by 2100, then these aquatic creatures could migrate from their present habitats to another region at a rate of 26 kilometres per decade.

On the other hand, if the Earth’s oceans warm by one degree Celsius under the best-case scenario then the marine fish would move 15 kilometres every decade.

“The tropics will be the overall losers. This area has a high dependence on fish for food, diet and nutrition. We’ll see a loss of fish populations that are important to the fisheries and communities in these regions,” said William Cheung, study co-author and associate professor at the UBC Fisheries Centre.

The study researchers used modeling method to find out how 802 species of fish and invertebrates of commercial importance react to the changing dynamics of oceans, warming water temperatures, changing ocean properties and the new habitats that will be opened at the poles.

The study was detailed in ICES Journal of Marine Science.

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Christina Langfold

Remember that weird girl in school who never quite managed to fit in? Who was always silent and strange? That was me during my entire teenage life. A few years after finishing college (with a degree in arts) I decided that the best way to become more sociable, while also feeling safe, is to test my people skills online.
  • Steve Schmidt

    “Disappear from tropics”? That’s not what the study says at all. Rather, it confirms the net movement that we expect from ALL organisms to stay within their optimal habitat. At the same time, other organisms will move in to occupy those vacated niches and some organisms will adapt (read “evolve”) to their changing habitat. We’re already seeing that with corals, which are adapting to changes in oceanic pH. While this study (based on models, just an extrapolation) is important, it isn’t a call to the extinction of tropical fisheries.

    • BruceMWilliams

      Yes, but there are no species evolved for the warmer conditions we are creating in the tropics. Where would they migrate in from? There is no warmer place where they could have evolved.

      • holoh

        By your logic, nothing would be alive today because of the temperature rise during the last ice age. During the last ice age, the highest temperature was lower than the lowest temperature on 97% of the planet today.

      • Steve Schmidt

        I really think it’s a lot more complicated than that. There will doubtless be a lot of vertical migration as opposed to north-south; that’s what happens every day in terrestrial ecosystems (I’m a professional forester) and I’m sure it is taking place in marine ecosystems as well. We use a rule-of-thumb on land that 1000′ vertical = 1000 miles north-south; in other words, you can find an adjacent ecosystem or species by walking up the mountain 1000′ or by driving 1000 miles north. Many/most coral reef complexes are sitting on the top of honking big mountains, so the reality of the situation is that fish ain’t gonna move 20km north to fit the model, there’s nothing out there but deep water. They will stay put, but through a combination of adaptation (moving deeper to find cooler water) and evolution (moving the population curve over to accommodate the warmer temperatures), they will carry on just like they have in the past.

      • Cliff Chism

        So, adaptation no longer works?

  • Robert Furst

    More of the same bull. I’d be more concerned with Ebola, Plague and ISIS

  • Dave W

    Don’t believe everything you read!

  • Yada, yada, yada. This was the same prediction these people made thirty years ago, only the given life expectancy then was “within the next decade”. I guess they have learned a little from their last attempt at mass-hysteria…now its within the next forty years.

    ex animo
    davidfarrar

    • Cliff Chism

      Exactly. They had to stop making predictions in the near term when they didn’t come true and people remembered.

      • melvintorme

        The data is publically available. Build your own model and create your own predictions. Get them peer-reviewed.

        Quit whining about other people’s work. THAT is what gets tiresome.

        Lazy people bore me.

        • Cliff Chism

          That’s pretty asinine of you.

    • Yada, yada, yada… same old head-in-the sand denier comment. As if reality wasn’t something we had to deal with?

  • Brian Willis

    all lies. fish will still be there if fukushima radiation doesnt kill them. shut up about global warming its a lie..except in summer time.

  • silqworm

    This nonsense is so disgracefully stupid that this journalist and the phony scientists and journal editors must know this is just a scam for them to make a living pretending to investigate or report something. The consequences for this fraud are needless death to billions of people, so they are all guilty of crimes against humanity. They should be brought to the Star Chamber on Reality TV Grand Jury, live from Nuremberg, Pennsylvania.

  • Candid Curmudgeon

    The sky is falling. Gawd, you climate alarmists are just getting silly now

    • holoh

      Agreed. The oceans’ temperature has been rising since the temperature started rising out of the last ice age. It if had not done so, we wouldn’t be alive today. Yet, despite the temperature rise, there is still life EVERYWHERE on the planet.

    • craigbhill

      You and anyone who has a similar lack of intelligence are idiots.

      • Steve Schmidt

        It’s unfortunate that the media has cherry-picked and spun the findings to make them more spooky. The authors were trying to say that there will be an overall movement of marine ecosystems towards the poles, just like there will be in terrestrial ecosystems. There will be ‘winners’ in the northern latitudes and ‘losers’ in the tropical latitudes. Candid, there’s no need to call people names over this, especially imaginary people. And as you point out craigbhill, people with limited intelligence are often idiots. Now that we have that out of the way, can we talk about the study?

        • Are you a scientist, Steve? The media has not been reporting how bad it could potentially get. The warming temperature is problematic for ocean currents and climates – but let’s assume for a moment that you are right and all these species (including humans) will simply move to a more hospitable location (here we come, Canada) – that is not going to correct the pH level of the ocean, for just one example. The ocean is on track for possibly hitting 7.8 before the end of the century, and if it does it is highly likely that 90% of marine species will go extinct. (Feel free to point me to CNN or MSNBC mentioning this on their evening program each night.) How do we know? There are CO2 vents around which the pH has reached that acidity and only 10% of the species are still alive.

          Maybe some of the species adapt. They have a few decades to do it. But, were it to switch overnight we know 90% of the species would go extinct. This is something to be very concerned about.

          Maybe something will come along and save us before the worst happens. I have confidence in human brilliance to find a solution. But we have not found it yet. Simply telling people it is “cherry-picked” is minimizing the potential danger. The worst case scenario is this will end civilization for humanity as we know it today and most of the species on our planet will go extinct. If we do nothing – maybe it won’t happen. But are you willing to bet the fate of civilization on that when you have nearly every scientist in agreement about the direction things are going? The odds are heavily stacked against that assessment.

          This is not a political discussion. It is one where we are trying to make the best decisions so capitalism, democracy and our way of life still exist a hundred years from now.

          • Steve Schmidt

            I am not a scientist, I am a licenced professional forester who practices ecosystem management in temperate and subboreal forests. I work with ecosystems every day, and after 45 years in the business I have seen a lot of interesting things. Plant and animal communities move, adapt, die, and are replaced. Empty niches are quickly filled. Life continually moves onward.

            The coming changes in marine ecosystems (and they ARE coming) are small potatoes compared to the enormous changes at the end of the last ice age. Can you imagine the ocean rising 400′ in, say 5000 years? An inch a year, probably ten inches a year during the peak. The enormous changes in temperature, salinity, pH? How DID the coral atolls and the great barrier reef survive that? And, of course, the planet spent hundreds of millions of years with atmospheric co2 triple what it is today. Thats when the Yucatan and Florida and the gbreef were formed. How did those corals do that under much higher pH than we’re predicting?

            They adapted. That’s what life does.

          • 400′ is 121 meters and over 5000 years that amounts to 2.42 meters every 100 years.

            The most dire predictions are that our seas will rise over 10 meters over the next 100 years. So, potentially 3 times worse.

            You may need to speak with some marine biologists. The last time our atmosphere had 400ppm CO2 was over 800K years ago. The coral reefs did nearly die off and disappeared from the fossil record, but yes – they eventually re-appeared and had success. I am not certain that is life adapting as much as dumb luck. All marine biologists I have spoken with (I have two friends that are) do not believe they, or most other ocean species, will be able to adapt to a 7.8 pH. Yes – you think they will find a way to adapt, and that is fine. But it comes back to whether you want to bet our way of life on that. I do not.

          • Borderlord

            The actual amount of rise in sea level is given in a recent report as 2.8mm annually, so in the next century, the total will be a bit under a foot. Dire indeed.
            Do you know what a neutral pH is, and which way it changes due to acidification? Or what the pH of the ocean is now?

          • Please give me a link to your scientific report. Mine is from the IPCC, and you would be hard pressed to find a more authoritative group, but I am happy to read whatever you have:

            “On the timescale of centuries to millennia, the melting of ice sheets could result in even higher sea level rise. Partial deglaciation of theGreenland ice sheet, and possibly the West Antarctic ice sheet, could contribute 4 to 6 m (13 to 20 ft) or more to sea level rise.”

            IPCC AR4 WG2 2007.

            http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/spm.html

          • Borderlord

            Don’t have the link. It was a NASA report regarding deep ocean warming, or rather the lack of same. It was stated in the report that surface warming contributes about a third of the 2.8mm annual rise in sea level.
            “the timescale of centuries to millennia” is not what I mentioned at all. A hundred years from now, you might get your ankles wet if the place you are standing is just on the water’s edge now.

  • craigbhill

    3 degrees celsius by 2100 is NOT the worst case scenario. Unless a miracle cure appears, holding to the status quo, 4 degrees celsius by 2050 is coming fast, which will be The End of life as we know it, which is to say the end of us as well by the 2040s.

  • GONESURFING

    All their previous predictions have been wrong, so they make some more to scare us, but global average temps. have been flat for 18 years and some are saying we could be going into a cooling period. Don’t believe these liars.

  • John Young

    Study is based in IPCC models which..oh gee…didn’t work either. Go back to your other career, James, or try a little RESEARCH!

  • drdavidn

    It is my understanding that under sharia law predicting the future is the crime of witchcraft and punishable by beheading. I think it is a good law.

    • Borderlord

      Think again. And this time give it some real thought.

      • drdavidn

        I’d like to point out that laws against fortune-telling are still on the books in all liberal democracies. Justice demands that fortune-tellers be prosecuted, including Al Gore.

    • melvintorme

      So making predictions about what the price of wheat, corn, or oil will be so that you can make an investment decision (speculating) should be a capital crime in your book?

      Who let the communist in?

      • drdavidn

        I’m sorry, I did not mean to offend the Christian Right. I really meant to quote the secular Law of Physics known as the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. You do believe in Physics, don’t you?

  • Peyton

    But there hasn’t been any global warming for over eighteen years now.
    Soon the “pause” in warming will exceed the actual number of years of warming….

  • Don P

    Funny, Just last week NASA published a report about Ocean temperatures. The fish will be fine.

    http://news.yahoo.com/lack-ocean-heat-puzzles-nasa-hunt-warming-hiatus-201944793.html

  • Easy Ed

    We watch the same thing happen with el nino on the West coast.

  • NinjaTroll

    James is a tourism and hospitality expert, who took to writing only a few years ago….That says it JAMES is not 2 bright

  • Mike Lynch

    What will happen to these species if there if global temperatures drop or average out to the same as it has been for the past few centuries? Is this more scare tactics to promote a carbon tax which will have absolutely no effect on global temperatures?

  • regbs

    James Kent: mouthpiece for the rulers. No different than a news reader for the official Chinese Communist Party News Agency. 2002 was supposed to be the year that all ice disappeared frmo the poles and polar bears survived only in zoos.

    Forget that, though. Now it’s tropical fish. Now the date is 2100. By that time, they’ll deem climate scepticism a hate crime, in the interest of fee speech and tolerance.

  • Danmax

    They can’t predict rain when its 10 miles away. Anybody can write anything and somebody is going to believe it. Folks need to work and worry about how to deal with whats happening now. ISIS, Ebola, Obama…Economy. Its ok for some of this mess of polluted science to be published tho– because it gives us something to read and comment on during boring Giants/Eagles games on Sunday nite.

  • The National Academy of Sciences has already determined that the GHGs added over the past hundred years or so cannot be removed, so temperature rise is inevitable. Additionally, the IPCC has declared that up to 1/2 of the increases are natural, and cannot be changed. While it is good to mitigate emissions of all kinds, and get America in the lead on the technologies to do so, China, the EU, and India must participate in order to make any long term difference. For the next hundred years, human adaptation to higher temperatures, by civil planning, is the only viable option.

  • JonSEAZ

    “The study researchers used modeling method….” Study? Really? A model is not reality, and is only as good as the input which makes up the model. If they already knew enough to make a correct model, they would not need to be doing a “study.” Garbage in, garbage out, I would say. Another junk science piece to push an agenda.

    • melvintorme

      I’d be willing to bet that your 401K is invested using a mathematical model. I’d also be willing to bet that there are more assumtions built into your investment models than the IPCC climate model.

      • JonSEAZ

        My retirement money all has been consolidated with Vanguard which no doubt uses mathematical models in their investment schemes. And, after many years and a few different mutual fund companies, I noticed that when the stock market rises, so do my returns; when the market falls, so do my returns–sort of like climate change. When the earth receives more energy on its surface, the climate warms up; when the earth receives less energy on its surface, the climate cools.

        In the meantime, we humans work hard at understanding what makes both the stock market and the climate tick. Some even go so far as to tout their expertise and make long and short range absolute predictions which they attempt to push everyone to accept. More often than not, both sets of predictors prove wrong over the long haul. The market follows it own course, as does the climate and all those who live in it.

        History is replete with the ashes of certainty.

  • Bill Payne

    Have you ever noticed how the dire predictions are for the future; in this case, 36 years from now? The “experts” have made many predictions about global climate catastrophes. Still, the coastal maps look the same. Global temps are in a strong cooldown phase that will continue for another 15 years. And, the southern ice cap has grown to an unprecedented all time high. All of this defies the climate models that were used to pass “emergency” rules to save the planet. Personally, I am preparing for another record breaking, butt cold winter with -25 degree temps. Oh, I can’t remember if we actually made it into the 90s this summer.

  • mosahlah

    The never ending warnings of impending doom are getting old. It feels like we’ve been waiting at this red light for 20 years.

  • PacificSage

    Are the climate change deniers willing to bet their lives that they’re right? Willing to bet the lives of their decedents? Because when the earth loses it’s ability to sustain large numbers of humans, and people die off in large numbers, those descendants will be the first eliminated.

  • The consequences of our warming world are many and they aren’t good. But the republicans in Congress continue to say that climate change isn’t a problem. Catering to the fossil fuel interests or some political agenda they block any legislation to reduce emissions. But business-as-usual puts people at risk. Don’t they care? Are their campaign sponsors more important than the people they swore to serve? Please join the efforts to get more of them out of office. We need law makers that are willing to face reality and deal with it.
    ExhaustingHabitability(dot)org

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