The World is Losing Fish to Eat as Oceans Warm, Study Finds (nytimes.com)

Fish populations are declining as oceans warm, putting a key source of food and income at risk for millions of people around the world, according to research published last week. From a report: The study found that the amount of seafood that humans could sustainably harvest from a wide range of species shrank by 4.1 percent from 1930 to 2010, a casualty of human-caused climate change. "That 4 percent decline sounds small, but it's 1.4 million metric tons of fish from 1930 to 2010," said Chris Free, the lead author of the study, which appears in the journal Science. Scientists have warned that global warming will put pressure on the world's food supplies in coming decades. But the new findings -- which separate the effects of warming waters from other factors, like overfishing -- suggest that climate change is already having a serious impact on seafood.

[...] As the oceans have warmed, some regions have been particularly hard-hit. In the northeast Atlantic Ocean and the Sea of Japan, fish populations declined by as much as 35 percent over the period of the study. "The ecosystems in East Asia have seen some of the largest decline in fisheries productivity," Dr. Free said. "And that region is home to some of the largest growing human populations and populations that are highly dependent on seafood."

Comments

Overfishing had nothing to do with it

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, it's all climate change. Decades of documented overfishing and thousands of studies that correctly connect overfishing with declining fish populations are completely meaningless now.

Re:Overfishing had nothing to do with it

[pr0fessor]

"The added burden of climate change to poorly managed and overfished stocks" would have been a crappy headline so they couldn't even add the first couple of lines of the article to the description.

Fisheries provide food and support livelihoods across the world. They are also under extreme pressure, with many stocks overfished and poorly managed. Climate change will add to the burden fish stocks bear, but such impacts remain largely unknown.

Re:Overfishing had nothing to do with it

[techno-vampire]

Of course they couldn't have added those first two sentences. If they did, they'd have had to admit that Global Warming isn't the main reason for declining fish stocks and that their scare headline was nothing more than BS.

Are the oceans really warming much at all

[SuperKendall]

Turns out there was a major problem with the study it said it was.

Also the ocean temperature drops rapidly as you go lower, the ocean temperature just a few feet down is not going to be changing much at all. Lots of fish spend most time below the very top layer.

The decline in fish populations is more likely a result of overfishing, something we should be working against - but thankfully there are quite a lot of fish farms these days, so the supply of fish for the world to eat is not as threatened as the summary makes it out to be.

Hmmm...

[Shaitan]

""The ecosystems in East Asia have seen some of the largest decline in fisheries productivity," Dr. Free said. "And that region is home to some of the largest growing human populations and populations that are highly dependent on seafood."

Sounds like a natural correction cycle.

More bullshit

[Virtucon]

Stop, enough. it's not about Climate Change, it's about overfishing and using fishing technologies that destroy habitat. We've known about this for decades and yet we still bottom dragging net catches and huge factory ships to overtax the eco system. Species are being wiped out because of their desirability and now sadly, rarity. This has nothing to do with fucking climate hoax and has everything to do with greed and too many people.

Re:Oh well, plenty of humans though

[DontBeAMoran]

Don't buy the Soylent Green made from clowns. It tastes funny.