Climate change 'may shrink fish'

[Brian Ellis]

The media report at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19758440 indicates that increasing ocean temperatures may cause a reduction of the size of fish. This could have negative effects on populations which depend on fish for their protein intake.

The scientists argue that failure to control greenhouse gas emissions will have a greater impact on marine ecosystems than previously thought.

The full scientific paper is freely downloadable at http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journ...imate1691.html

Changes in temperature, oxygen content and other ocean biogeochemical properties directly affect the ecophysiology of marine water-breathing organisms[1, 2, 3]. Previous studies suggest that the most prominent biological responses are changes in distribution[4, 5, 6], phenology[7, 8] and productivity[9]. Both theory and empirical observations also support the hypothesis that warming and reduced oxygen will reduce body size of marine fishes[10, 11, 12]. However, the extent to which such changes would exacerbate the impacts of climate and ocean changes on global marine ecosystems remains unexplored.

Guess the British traditional fish'n'chips will be more chips and less fish!