Recently, scientists have discovered that "Fish species are expected to shrink in size by up to 24% because of global warming." This statement may be surprising, but scientists have proof.
Because of global warming, the temperatures of the oceans are getting warmer. This directly affects the fish's metabolism. The fish will not have enough oxygen to do things a normal body fish is able to do. This leads to the fish's growth stopping at a smaller size.
Scientist's models actually seem to be an understatement of what is actually going on. The actual observations show a much greater decrease in body size than what the models show.
The decreasing size of fish will have a wide felt impact. First, the fish will migrate north to find colder water, thus with more oxygen. Also, "Smaller individuals produce fewer and smaller eggs which could affect the reproductive potential of fish stocks and could potentially reduce their resilience to other factors such as fishing pressure and pollution," From this quote, we can infer that it will effect the economy greatly.
I believe that because of global warming, everything is changing. Fish are not the only ones that are effective. Everything will have to change eventually but recently, fish show the greatest change. I also think that we have to do something about global warming because it is not having a positive effect on the environment or the economy.
In biology class, we learned that all living things react to stimulus and grow. Since there is less oxygen in the water, the fish are not growing as much as they used to. The fish are also migrating north which tells us that they are reacting to the lack of oxygen.
Link to article: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19758440
Picture: 2012. Photograph. BBC News. . Sep. 2012. Sept. 6 Oct. 2012. <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19758440>
Jeff, I have learned a lot just from reading your blog post. It actually helped me understand something that happened to me over the summer. This previous summer I was in Cape Cod and we went fishing a couple times. We didn't have much luck catching anything though. Then later in the day, somebody told us that the water temperatures in the cape have been the highest in decades or more. I finally understand how those two things are connected. Nice job with your blog post, it was interesting to read.
ReplyDeletePrior to reading this article, I'd known one of the side affects of global warming was the ocean temperatures rising, but I'd never related that to fish. It makes sense that fish would be affected when the water temperature changes, because they would have to maintain homeostasis and there would be less oxygen in the water. This post was really interesting to me.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting how fish size is decreasing due to global warming. This is probably very unlikely to come up as a significant effect of it. However, I think that it's a good idea to bring attention to it. With fish not producing as much in the warmer waters, a major food supply will diminish. The marine community will be thrown off. We should take the steps to intervene now before the results become drastic. Eventually the lower population will affect us too, and might possibly lead to other species dying off as well.
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