Is Climate Change Killing Our Fish?

Arctic News ^ | March 15, 2004 | Joseph Quillan

[tgarr]

At first I thought this was just more global warming stuff. But that's not the story. I never could figure why the fish never came back after all this time. This seems to make sense.

[Argus]

The relative densities of phytoplankton and zooplankton are the key.

[VaBthang4]

"Is Climate Change Killing Our Fish?"

WHO CARES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[tgarr]

That could be. But that has never killed the fish along the east coast before. At least not in the last 400 years that anyone can remember. Question is then; what's killing the plankton?

[tgarr]

New England fisherman for one. I guess they don't count in your book.

[Argus]

It's like a bad feedback loop, started by overfishing. With fewer deep water fish to feed on the zooplankton, their population mushrooms. Since the zooplankton feed on the phytoplankton, the population of the latter diminishes with the increase in their specific predators. The phytoplankton in the oceans are the main global agents of photosynthesis, turning carbon dioxide into oxygen. Phytoplankton, not the rainforest, are the real "lungs of the planet". Diminish the phytoplankton population and you get more carbon dioxide left in the atmosphere, which causes the greenhouse effect - i.e., "global warming". This is the actual cause of climate change, and it is affecting the North Atlantic as the article notes. It is the result of human activity, in this case overfishing, but it's not the same as industrial pollution, which has been misidentified as the cause.

[stylin19a]

The article gives mulitple and diverse potential reasons for the reduction in fish life.

Mybe...just maybe the title should be"
"Dead Fish Cause Climate Change"....

[tgarr]

So you're saying then that oxygen levels are key. But why hasn't anyone detected lower oxygen levels in the ocean? Or have they? Do you have any information on this?

[pointsal]

factory fishing ships (not meager boats)...using the latest satellite technology and mega nets....there's a clue about fish decline. Let's all go back to subsistence and only hunt/fish our local area.

[tgarr]

I agree. It was a mistake to let all those big factory ships take all that fish. We should have never let factory ships take fishing away from the small-time fisherman.

[Clint Williams]

BTW, since nobody else has said so: Welcome to FreeRepublic

[tgarr]

Thanks

[Argus]

No, it's not oxygen levels in the ocean, but carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, that cause the greenhouse effect. Phytoplankton are found closer to the surface of the ocean, because they use sunlight for photosynthesis.

[connectthedots]

Salmon runs in the Pacific Northwest are the highest in several decades, and guess what? No dams have been removed. How could this happen? If dams were the problem, the fish runs would have disappeared decades ago.

[Old Professer]

This is a chart from Google:

As you can see, the population worldwide has increased from just about 2B in 1942 to 5.8B today; in order to support an increase of this magnitude an organic source of food must have been sacrificed or multiplied along with it.

While I'm not saying that this pressure accounts for the changes we see now, what I am suggesting is that it is a bit late to start saving string.

[dogbyte12]

Of course Mathias was wrong about population, but not entirely.

We do not know the impact that the amount of people we are creating now is going to have. It does throw things out of whack. Mother nature is fighting back though. Fertility rates are dropping rapidly in the first world. Everything tends to balance itself out.

[Joe Boucher]

Aren't they still taking barges from N.Y. out into the ocean a few hundred miles and dumping every bit of vile from N.Y. into the SEA?
And the ocean is having problems? Well DUH.

[Ramius]

Overfishing is the key. The same thing is happening in Alaska. Modern fishing methods have simply become exceptionally efficient, and in even the best of the fishing grounds, nature is not keeping up with our ability to harvest.

I am certainly no eco-freak. I am on the side of the fisherman. But today's catcher-processor boats are just too effective and there are too many of them.

What is needed is more farm-raising of fish and shellfish, but the eco-freaks are fighting this everywhere it starts up. But just as the demand for meat would not be met by hunting wild game without wiping out whole game populations, the world demand for fish cannot be met anymore by hunting in the wild. We can farm it, just like we did with cattle so many years ago.

My .02

[dirtboy]

So you're saying then that oxygen levels are key. But why hasn't anyone detected lower oxygen levels in the ocean? Or have they? Do you have any information on this?

There actually was an article about this poster on FR a few days ago - they have detected a decrease in deep-sea oxygen levels. I did a bit of Googling to check out the premises and learned something new, although I should have figured this out from other sources - cold water holds more dissolved oxygen than warm water, which is the opposite of how dissolution normally works.

[Ramius]

The small time fisherman cannot keep up with the demand for fish products. Not without fish becoming more valuable than gold per pound.