[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?

[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.