Climate Change Lowering Fish Species

According to a study, the warming of the waters brought on by climate change will result in a drop in fish species that are productive now. Predator-prey interactions will prohibit species from keeping up with the conditions where they could thrive, according to research published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B journal.

Large species and fisheries with significant commercial value will not only leave their historical ranges as the climate heats, but they will also probably be less numerous even in their new geographic areas, according to the researchers. For example, a cod fisherman in the Atlantic might still find fish 200 years from now but in significantly fewer numbers, they said. "What that suggests from a fisheries perspective is that while the species we fish today will be there tomorrow, they will not be there in the same abundance," said study co-author Malin Pinsky.

"In such a context, overfishing becomes easier because the population growth rates are low. Warming coupled with food-web dynamics will be like putting marine biodiversity in a blender," Pinsky said.  "The model predicts that species are going to continuously reorganise and be in the process of altering their ranges over the next 200 years of warming," said E W Tekwa, the study's lead author and a former postdoc at Rutgers who is now at the University of British Columbia in Canada.

According to Tekwa, "marine species will still lag behind climate variations even 200 years from now, and this is especially true for those at the top of the food web." A massive reorganisation of life on Earth is occurring as a result of millions of species relocating poleward as the climate warms. However, a crucial aspect of life—the need for food—has been largely disregarded in our understanding of these processes.