Warming Is Reshuffling Life In The Oceans
Uriel Sinai/Getty Images
Warming ocean temperatures are forcing sea turtles and many other ocean creatures to find new homes in cooler waters all around the world, according to a study published this summer in the journal Nature Climate Change.
More than 80 percent of the world's marine life is responding to warming waters and the changing chemistry of the oceans by migrating to different places and by changing their breeding and feeding patterns, the study reports.
Some species have migrated as much as 600 miles from where they were once abundant just a few decades ago, noting that ocean life is responding to climate change by moving to new places as much as 10 times faster than species that live on land.
“Marine species are responding much, much faster than [land] species," said Ben Halpern, a research biologist at the University of California-Santa Barbara and one of the study's co-authors. "Which is both surprising and worrisome because it has consequences – some of which we know about, and some of which will only unfold in the near future."
Already, some of the smallest and most important life in the oceans have experienced perhaps the biggest shifts. Phytoplankton, the tiny single-celled plants that make up the base of the food chain for all life in the oceans, have moved as much as 1,000 miles away from their previous locations.
Read the full story: Climate Change Is Pushing Marine Life Toward the Poles