New England fisheries hit hard by warming waters - 0 views
www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm
climate change impact oceans fisheries fish species USA New England eyewitness
shared by Hunter Cutting on 14 Jul 10
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A 2007 study by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration looked at codfish catch records over four decades. It concluded what fishermen who know this cold-loving fish would have predicted: As the bottom water temperature increased, the probability of catching a cod decreased.
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Last year, a federal effort to coordinate research, the U.S. Global Change Research Program, found ocean warming already was forcing a migration of some species.
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"The northward shifts we have seen in the area are due in part to climate change. We are starting to see some of the effects of global climate change in our area," said Janet Nye, a NOAA researcher working out of Woods Hole, Mass. She studied historical fish records and found that of 36 northwest Atlantic species, almost half had moved northward in 40 years as water temperatures warmed. She predicted the traditional stocks of cold-water fish are likely to be replaced by croaker and red hake, fish normally found farther south.
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Many fishermen switched to lobster as winter flounder, a cold-water fish once abundant in fishing boat holds, declined. But lobster stocks are stressed in some areas now. Biologists on a multi-state Fisheries Commission committee have found that warmer waters, disease and fishing have depleted lobster stocks, and they recently recommended a five-year ban on lobstering from Cape Cod to Virginia.
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"One of the grim realities of global warming is that it is bringing change to fisheries. There are going to be regime changes in the oceans and management is going to have to adapt to that,"
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Greg Walinski believes he has seen first-hand the workings of warmer waters on fish stock. The 53-year-old Cape Cod fisherman used to hunt for large bluefin tuna. "In the '80s and '90s we would get 60 to 80 giant bluefin in a season," he said. "But we started to see less and less. It got to a point where it wasn't even worth going out. Most of the big fish are up in Canada," he said. "We get the little bluefin that used to be further south."
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He switched to cod, but in what seems to be a repeat of the pattern, Walinski said he finds himself chasing the fish further and further out. He now travels 120 miles in a 35-foot boat - an arduous and somewhat dangerous commute - to reach Georges Bank for codfish.
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regulators say they have seen little evidence of a similar rebound in cod on the George's Bank, and some other cold-water species, like winter flounder and pollock, remain low.