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.