Climate change is driving tropical fish away from the tropicsPicture the Great Barrier Reef for a mi

Climate change is driving tropical fish away from the tropicsPicture the Great Barrier Reef for a minute. One thing you probably don’t imagine is a lot of algae, right?Tropical areas in the oceans are great places for algae to grow because of all the sunlight, but reef communities are able to still build in this area for a simple reason; that algae is food for voracious tropical fish like you see here. On the other hand, if you think of the oceans outside the tropics, you might imagine a different picture. People go diving near tropical reefs but away from the tropics the waters are often cloudier, filled with blooms of algae. Outside of the tropics it is generally too cold for the types of tropical fish that consume all of the algae. Thus different types of ecosystems are able to thrive in those areas. However, due to climate change, that is shifting rapidly. New research led by Dr. Adriana Verges from the University of New South Wales looked at a series of ocean communities just outside the tropics in locations from both hemispheres, including Japan, Australia, the Atlantic, and the coasts of the U.S. and found a disturbing trend.As the waters warm, the fish that formerly were confined to the tropics were rapidly spreading outwards, consuming the algae in those areas and completely disrupting the natural ecosystem. This process isn’t complete everywhere yet, but in southern Japan an influx of tropical fish has already led to the complete collapse of the environment where the abalone was fished. There’s even a term, “isoyake” that reflects formerly algae-rich areas now turning barren.A similar pattern is forming in the Eastern Mediterranean, where they recorded a 40% drop in the number of species over the past 20 years. The influx of tropical fish species into formerly cold waters is being seen worldwide and can be recorded in fish catch statistics. This research implies that as the oceans continue to warm, the future of many formerly subtropical fish catcheries in the oceans will look a lot like that of Japan today; stripped, barren and facing decades-long recovery times.-JBBImage credit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coastal_fish#mediaviewer/File:Moofushi_Kandu_fish.jpgOriginal paper:http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/281/1789/20140846.full.html -- source link
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