photographer Brian Skerry has been diving in the Gulf of Maine for more than 40 years. After learning these waters were a harbinger of climate change, he set out to document the rapid shift and its ripple effects.
Over the centuries, the rise of sophisticated commercial fishing fleets has led to a steep decline in marine wildlife. Atlantic cod, its supply once believed to be inexhaustible, is now at one percent of colonial levels. So within just a couple hundred years, we have removed 99 percent of this species from the region. In the past four decades spent exploring these waters, I have witnessed how such declines have made the ecosystem weaker and more vulnerable in ways I never imagined.
Pershing’s report, “Slow Adaptation in the Face of Rapid Warming Leads to Collapse of the Gulf of Maine Cod Fishery,” sparked research that shows how these waters have continued warming at an alarming rate. More than 60 rivers flow into the Gulf of Maine, adding water that is on average warmer than the ocean, Tilburg explains. Meanwhile, the region’s relatively shallow waters also absorb atmospheric heat.
There’s more bad news for lobsters. The same carbon emissions behind climate change affect not only the ocean’s temperature but also its chemistry. The water is becoming more acidic. Fields says anything with a calcium exoskeleton or chitinous shell, from coral reefs to copepods, can get eroded by such acidification. It could potentially threaten a young lobster’s fragile exoskeleton in 10 or 20 years.
Craig recently published a paper showing how butterfish migration, because of warming oceans, appears to be having an impact on tern chick survival: Nearly 80 percent of the butterfish delivered to chicks by their parents don’t get eaten. Alewives had virtually disappeared from the gulf because dams kept them from migrating. The removal of dams in key rivers such as the Penobscot and Presumpscot, done largely in hopes of restoring Atlantic salmon populations, resulted in the revival of the alewife’s ancient migratory route; runs of fish in the millions now occur every spring.
As Witman has documented, Cashes has one of every kind of offshore or subtidal marine habitat that exists off the coast of New England, with species rarely seen elsewhere. Because of the ledge’s submerged rocky ridges, waves and currents push large amounts of plankton to the creatures that eat it; Witman says it’s like a food elevator.
المملكة العربية السعودية أحدث الأخبار, المملكة العربية السعودية عناوين
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