By IANS,
Sydney : Climate change will necessitate fish and other marines species to travel large distances for sheer survival.
Sea life, particularly in the Indian Ocean, Western and Eastern Pacific and subarctic oceans, will face growing pressures to adapt or relocate to escape extinction, according to the ARC Centre for Coral Reef Studies and The University of Queensland.
“Our research shows that species which cannot adapt to the increasingly warm waters… have to swim farther and faster to find a new home,” says study co-autor John Pandolfi, professor at the ARC Centre, the journal Science reports.
Using 50 years’ data of global temperature changes since the 1960s, researchers analysed the shifting climates and seasonal patterns on land and in the oceans to understand how this will affect life in both over the coming century, according to the ARC Centre.
“We examined the velocity of climate change (the geographic shifts of temperature bands over time) and the shift in seasonal temperatures for both land and sea.
“We found both measures were higher for the ocean at certain latitudes than on land, despite the fact that the oceans tend to warm more slowly than air over the land,” says Pandoli.
The finding has serious implications especially for marine biodiversity hotspots, viz the famous Coral Triangle and reefs that flourish in equatorial seas, and for life in polar seas, the team says.