Tag Archives: marine heat wave
Did climate change really kill billions of snow crabs in Alaska? Here’s what experts say
Some fishers and crab experts have put forward a different idea: They’ve suggested that fishing, particularly the unintentional capture of crabs in fishing gear known as trawls, also contributed to the loss of the snow crab, or at the very least, impeded the species’ recovery from low population levels. The snow crab fishing season closure has amplified a chorus of concerns around Alaska’s trawling industry — mainly from within the fishery sector itself — and the knowledge gaps around its potential impact on fisheries. >click to read< 08:29
Scientists point to longfin squid for Maine’s prized shrimp fishery collapse
Maine shrimp were long a regional delicacy fishermen and diners alike looked forward to each fall,,, But in 2012, their population collapsed, federal regulators closed the fishery, and they haven’t recovered since. Maine was always at the southern edge of their range, and the crash coincided with an extreme marine heat wave that warmed the Gulf of Maine’s waters to the highest temperatures since the 1950s. But some thought there had to be more to the shrimp’s disappearance than just heat-sensitivity. “After I saw this I remembered a fisherman saying to me ‘it’s the damn squid.’ He was saying there had been squid all over the place that spring,” Richards said. >click to read< 16:22
Study connects marine heat wave with spike in whale entanglements
A new study shows how the record-breaking marine heat wave of 2014 to 2016 caused changes along the U.S. West Coast that led to an unprecedented spike in the numbers of whales that became entangled in fishing gear. “With the ocean warming, we saw a shift in the ecosystem and in the feeding behavior of humpback whales that led to a greater overlap between whales and crab fishing gear,” said Jarrod Santora, a researcher in applied mathematics at UCSC’s Baskin School of Engineering and first author of the study,,,,>click to read< 10:02
