Be prepared for smaller fish.
That’s the warning from researchers at the University of British Columbia, who say that we could see the maximum body weight of fish shrink by as much as 20% by the middle of the century, according to a study published in the journal Nature Climate Change.
They blame global warming, which is heating up the world’s oceans. Warm water holds less oxygen than cold water.
“A warmer and less-oxygenated ocean, as predicted under climate change, would make it more difficult for bigger fish to get enough oxygen, which means they will stop growing sooner,” Daniel Pauly, lead investigator in the University of British Columbia’s Sea Around Us Project and co-author of the study, said in a statement.
The researchers looked at more than 600 species of fish around the world and used computer modeling to determine how the lower availability of oxygen would affect them. More than 75% of the species are expected to see a loss in size.
Continue reading the full article on the CNN Blog…
http://lightyears.blogs.cnn.com/2012/10/03/researchers-worlds-fish-to-get-smaller-as-oceans-warm/?hpt=hp_c2
