Warm Water Squid Reported Off Alaskan Coast

fenris_23 writes "The associated press is reporting Humboldt Squid - a species that lives in the warm waters off the Baja coast - have recently been observed off the coast of Alaska. 'A large Humboldt squid caught offshore from Sitka is among numerous sightings of a species seen for the first time in waters of the Far North, and the first of the species recovered from British Columbia waters.' This may help corroborate a similar slashdot story covering rising CO2 levels measured at the Mauna Loa Observatory where the possibility was raised that rising sea temperatures are reducing the Earth's ability to manage greenhouse gases."

Comments

Seen similar thing

[Jesrad]

Off Brittany coast, around the Belle-Ile-en-Mer island, (latitude around 47.3, that's upper North than New-York or even Boston) now live tropical fishes. They've established there a couple years ago.

The sea there has been warming these last years. I'd say on average it went up 2 C in temperature, but that's a totally unscientific estimate of mine.

Just a normal El Nino year

[Marxist Hacker 42]

This has nothing to do with global warming- and almost everything to do with a weather phenomenon caused by reversal of currents in the Pacific. In an El Nino year- these sightings are quite common (tropical fish off the coast of Oregon and Washington, warm water species in the Gulf of Alaska, etc). It's easy to see why- a reversal of currents means instead of cold water coming south from the poles, warm water is headed north from the equator. (the other side of the big convection current is off the coast of Japan- where El Nino years mean you get different species of sushi on your plate).