A new UBC study suggests climate change could create a boom in tropical fish species in BC, but an overall drop of up to 35 per cent in catches in some places due to increasing acid and decreasing oxygen in the world’s oceans.
Professor William Cheung with UBC’s Fisheries Centre presented his findings Saturday at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, held at the Vancouver Convention Centre.
The predictions were generated by a computer simulator that accounted for increases in the ocean’s temperature, decreasing oxygen levels, and acidification, which is caused by the increasing absorption of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
“What we find is that if we just look at warming, the animals will shift their distribution, because for fish and for some of the shellfish, they like to live in a certain temperature of the water, and if water gets warmer, they will very likely move to a higher latitude or move north, so that they can find cooler water to live,” Cheung said.
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Kate Webb, News1130, 18 February 2012. Full article.
