OCEAN WARMING THREATENING COMMERCIAL SHELLFISH

Published Sep 10, 2020

Tridge summary

A study led by Rutgers University, published in Nature Climate Change, has found that ocean warming is driving commercial shellfish into warmer waters, threatening their survival. The research shows that changes to the spawning times of bottom-dwelling invertebrates, such as sea scallops and blue mussels, are pushing their larvae into warmer waters, leading to a feedback loop of earlier spawning times and smaller occupied areas. The study, which analyzed six decades of data on 50 species, also highlighted the need for more research on the impacts of ocean warming on these species in other areas.

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Original content

Ocean warming threatening commercial shellfish. Ocean warming is paradoxically driving bottom-dwelling invertebrates – including sea scallops, blue mussels, surfclams and quahogs that are valuable to the shellfish industry – into warmer waters and threatening their survival, a Rutgers-led study shows. In a new study published in the journal Nature Climate Change, researchers identify a cause for the “wrong-way” species migrations: warming-induced changes to their spawning times, resulting in the earlier release of larvae that would then be pushed into warmer waters by ocean currents. The researchers studied six decades of data on 50 species of bottom-dwelling invertebrates, and found that about 80 percent have disappeared from the Georges Bank and the outer shelf between the Delmarva Peninsula and Cape Cod, including off the coast of New Jersey. “These deeper, colder waters of the outer shelf should provide a refuge from warming so it is puzzling that species distributions are ...

Source: Fish Focus