Climate change threatens to SHRINK FISH AND CHIP SUPPERS Climate change could threaten the quintessential British meal, the venerable fish and chips, which will only be available in small portions or not at all if boffins are correct. The scientists have warned that the body weight of fish, including North Sea haddock and cod, will drop if oceans warm up. The theory goes that warmer …
So the rumours say. On the other hand:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-18646660
and debunking some recent newspaper stories:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19755695
So as ever it depends who you ask but the extinction of Cod appears to have been exaggerated..at least recently.
Cod are already shrinking due to natural selection.
The nets used to trawl for cod have to have holes large enough to let the young cod escape. As a result, if you are an older smaller cod you are more likely to survive and pass your genes on. Hence you get shrinking fish.
There is a whole host of research out their about fish, including changes is size, all based upon actual physical evidence and not some computer model being tweaked by a researcher, who has probably never even handled a fish let alone measured it.
The idea behind the larger holes in the nets is to let juvenille fish through. The fact smaller (i.e. Young) fish get through is because they are going to continue to grow & when they are mature they will reproduce. If you catch them too young they never get the chance.
Your argument is like saying now that I'm 35 and even though I'm 6'5" 220lbs that if I had bred when I was only 15 and much smaller it would have an impact on the size of my progeny. That's not the way genetics works.
The following paper is one of a multitude on similar themes. It uses real world data not a computer model.
PNAS Jan 13th 2009 "Human predators outpace other agents of trait change in the wild" Chris T Darimont et al
Selected parts of the abstract:
"... humans now typically exploit high proportions of prey populations and target large, reproductive-aged adults. Consequently, organisms subject to consistent and strong ‘harvest selection’ by fishers, hunters, and plant harvesters may be expected to show particularly rapid and dramatic changes in phenotype."
"These changes, which include average declines of almost 20% in size-related traits and shifts in life history traits of nearly 25%, are most rapid in commercially exploited systems...."
One the organisms they look at is Atlantic cod.
As for your ridiculous argument, a child at age 2 is approximately half its adult height* so if all children over 3 foot tall at age 2 were "harvested" then adults over 6 foot tall would become rare. Hence tall people would not be able to pass on their tall genes because they were expunged from the gene pool at age 2. With fish, its the nets. The longer a fish can pass through the nets the more likely it is to pass on its genes which makes being big a genetic dis-advantage.
* Obviously this is not true for all children/adults. Some will be smaller than 3ft and grow to be taller than 6ft and vice-versa but it is true enough for a reasonable estimate of a child's adult height.
"Your argument is like saying now that I'm 35 and even though I'm 6'5" 220lbs that if I had bred when I was only 15 and much smaller it would have an impact on the size of my progeny. That's not the way genetics works."
How about:
You bred at 15, 16, 17 before being caught in the net due to your increasing size
Whereas your smaller brother who doesn't have the "tall" gene:
Breeds at 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21 before being caught in the net due to his increasing size.
Your smaller brother had 7 years to breed compared to your 3 so had lots more opportunity to pass on his "small" genes. Since being smaller has a survival advantage then the species will tend to reduce in size.
Spot on! I have supplied equipment to a local University project that is studying this.
There is good evidence that the average fish size is getting smaller due to the fact that only the larger fish are removed from the population ie caught. If more larger fish are left in the population then these will breed and the average size increases again.
The problem is that, like in humans, the larger fish are not necessarily the older fish - they may be younger fish that are going to be larger fish when more mature. These are the fish you need to breed larger fish but they can get caught too early. DNA analysis is confirming this.
... scientists were surprised"
This must be pre-printed on every climate-related press release.
Now let's look at the modelers assumptions.
"Assuming that other resources for growth are constant"
Yeah, OK. But we know there more CO2 means more plant food for fish, we know that life thrives in warmer temperatures, we know ecosystems are stimulated by CO2, we know warmer climate causes greater biodiversity.
The model, and the report, are garbage. Where's Lewis when you need him?
Back in the land of measurements, not models...
http://www.cnr.uidaho.edu/fish511/Readings/temp%20Size%20growth%20atl%20salmon.pdf
"In conclusion, the present study shows ontogenetic variation in optimum temperature for growth in juvenile Atlantic salmon smolts, with increased temperature optimum for growth and decreased temperature for feed conversion efficiency as the fish grow bigger."
(The water has to get *much* hotter before a decrease in the growth of the fish is seen)
Salmon are mainly carnivorous in the sea, so unlikely to benefit directly, if at all, from more algae.
The caricaturisation of CO2 as plant food is grossly simplistic, particularly in an marine ecosystem.
Even if the CO2 is taken up by algae in sufficient quantities to not change the ph of the water, you'd better hope it's the right algae which is growing for the bottom of the food chain to feed on. Many fish and invertebrates can only feed on specific algae and will simply die out if those algae are out-competed by pest algae which are able to take up the CO2 more readily. This would cause the whole food chain to collapse.
A warmer climate may well cause greater bio-diversity, but if that bio-diversity is a whole load of different pest algae and the larger predators at the top of the food chain die out, because they can't adapt to the cold, or because a key link in the chain dies out, that's hardly a desirable situation.
I don't know what you're a doctor in, but it certainly isn't marine biology.
We don't always need Lewis to spread confusion, we already have you!! ;)
More CO2 means more plants in the sea, so we will have more algae, but as CO2 increases, more Phytoplankton and less Zooplankton , so small animals (and some large ones) have less food. Bigger animals that depend on Zooplankton eaters have in turn less food, etc.
So me have more Oxygen use in the night, but less oxygen, as Oxygen concentration diminishes with increases in temperature, and you end up with less fish. You might get plenty of jellyfish, if that's what you like...
Noticed how all "climate change" (formerly (ie before the few cold years) - "global warming") always are negative? How always the scientists are "stunned" that the rate of whatever-deterioration is "much faster than expected" and is "accelerating sharply"?
Well here is a conundrum. Let's assume that the shills are right, this time and that warmer waters mean faster metabolism, doesnt it mean that the fish will grow faster, therefore be bigger? And even if not, doesnt the lower size due to the boowoowoo climate change will result in lower need for oxygen? Lower need for oxygen, more oxigen for the fishes, more oxigen for the fishes, bigger fishes? It is called negative feedback, boffins.
and finally, "we may be missing a big piece of the puzzle of understanding climate change effects in the ocean" - yea sure, and "we" need much more research budgets!
"...But at teh same time some fish DO much better in warmer waters..."
Not if they are evolved to live in cold water and can't adjust fast enough as most probably they can't. What will most likely happen is they will stay in the waters which are at a temperature they are comfortable with, so as warm waters stretch further north/south, the coldwater fish will retreat still further north/south into an ever decreasing habitat.
According to the good doctor's logic, he can state with absolute assurance that he has had soup du jour, it was chicken, and [bedevere voice]logically,[/bedevere voice] every time you have soup du jour, it will be chicken for you as well.
Explain again how sheep's bladders may be employed to prevent earthquakes.
WIll predators be affected in the same way, i.e. a reduction in size as the size of the food pyramid shrinks? If this is the case, rather than there simply being fewer of them, then those lasers are going to have to be miniarurised further.
On the upside I might finally be able to keep a laser equipped shark in the bath. That should peturb the (white, obligatory colour) cat.
There's a solution: Simply bring an asteroid into orbit around the Earth to block out the Sun.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2210798/Global-warming-combatted-asteroid-dust-acting-like-sunshade-earth-scientists-say.html
, from exquisitely stupid scientists at the University of Strathclyde. Motto: Doing our best to destroy public trust in Science.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech
Is all you need to know. Actually, maybe we should coin the term "Daily Mail Science" for articles like that.
I like the guy in the comments suggesting that we should plant trees in the desert to combat global warming and create a rainforest though. That's a sound plan, I'll get my bucket and spade.
It's strange... that all the fish with high metabolic rates tend to be bloody huge. Tuna, Mackerel sharks, that sort of thing. Odd that peopl estudying fish missed that one.
Is the shrinking size of fish suppers now not more to do with overfishing that means younger and younger fish are dragged from the ocean, before their prime?
And to think, I'm so tired of this ass-poor correlation automatically equalling causation mentality, that I was actually expecting their assertion to be that higher temperatures lead to lower solubility of oxygen in water, per se, in line with the general dissolution of gas in liquids. Someone might want to call the Devonian period and ask about how small the Dunkleosteus were then...
Are you sure of that?
White sharks they think have a slow metabolic rate.
I would have thought Longimanus has a pretty slow metabolic rate as well because of its lifestyle.
With pelagic species if anything I would have expected slow metabolic rates as they travel big distances between food.
Science has betrayed us as they still refuse to say any crisis “WILL” happen, only “might” and “could” and…
NOT ONE single IPCC warning is without “maybes” despite “being at the tipping point, maybe” and threatening the voter’s children with deaths by CO2 is as good as voting for Romneycon. Climate change was Liberalism’s Iraq War of Climate WMD lies and fear mongering.
*Occupywallstreet does not even mention CO2 in its list of demands because of the bank-funded carbon trading stock markets run by corporations.
*Obama has not mentioned the crisis in the last two State of the Unions addresses.
*Julian Assange is of course a climate change denier.
*Canada killed Y2Kyoto with a freely elected climate change denying prime minister and nobody cared, especially the millions of scientists warning us of unstoppable warming (a comet hit).
Meanwhile, the entire world of SCIENCE, lazy copy and paste journalism and Liberal progressivism had allowed bank-funded and corporate-run “CARBON TRADING STOCK MARKETS”(ruled by trustworthy politicians) to trump the UN's and entire world's efforts into 3rd world fresh water relief, starvation rescue and 3rd world education for just over 26 years of insane attempts at climate CONTROL.
What you've displayed is the clear position of someone who doesn't understand science and/or the scientific method.
If you did, then you would know that no scientist will ever say "if x happens, then y *will* happen", they may, in some of the more stable and accepted scientific answers (say, for example, Boyles Law), say that "if x happens, then we expect to see y".
The reason for this is that science doesn't work with absolutes, it works with probabilities and with any probability you have to accept that even at a tiny level, you could be wrong (this is why it's still called the Theory of Evolution).
If you want to talk in absolute's, talk to a politician, religious fanatic or a sales-man.
"Atlantic cod are already declining in numbers; with a bit more aggressive fishing they can be properly wiped out rather than merely shrunk."
I feel sufficiently guilty to have stopped eating cod or tuna.
Unless I'm drunk, and the fish shop is on the way home, and I forget.
But *mainly* I've stopped eating it.
OK, I am going to be a bit anecdote-ey here, but my auntie who used to live on a croft in an island-y UK location with a nice little beach as part of it, used to get very pissed off indeed at trawlers coming in nearly onto the rocks and hoovering up basically anything that had any protein in it (sandeels, any other fish etc).
Then people would wonder why the birdlife - puffins etc were always starving.
And why it was so hard to catch anything anymore in an open boat with a traditional hand-line.
As far as I know most of the fish caught in this way is not for eating, just minced into animal feed, no-one gets to see an actual fish. I think a lot of ocean fish are disappearing this way, and not just into feed for farm animals, it's also made into petfood. And lets not forget all the feed for fish farms, normally salmon farms.
Which might explain why it is hard to get a decent fish, so clearly people are eating less actual fish than before, but strangely the supply is dropping too!
Also, isn't some fish protein made into organic fertiliser? :P
While you Londoners continue to dine on caviar and champagne, making snide remarks about those who reside outside of the M25 ring of concrete, I am particularly concerned about the potential knock on that smaller Fish Suppers will have on the Computer Science departments of Scottish Universities.
Your cows aren't shrinking?
Yet last time I had a "burger" from a US-based fast food "restaurant", all I got was a skimpy slice of "meat"* in half a bap.
At least when I visit a chip shop in the UK and Ireland and order a Fish Supper I know what I'm getting. Cod is increasing in price, though other fish such as Haddock are coming in slightly cheaper.
* May or may not contain actual meat. Offal etc is still classed as Beef.
Hmm. Perhaps this warning is the God's truth.
But if it's NOT, I want some ancient-Egyptian-esque consequences.
If a doomsayer is WRONG, I think he should be forced to live in the world he predicted (e.g.: if it was end-of-the-world stuff, he should be put to death. In this case, he would be required to pay outlandish prices for very tiny portions of fish).
This would be applicable both for the scientist who did the prediction as well as the journalist who repeated him.
Romney thanks you for fear mongering votes his way by condemning the voter's children to their CO2 deaths. Nice job girls.
*Occupywallstreet does not even mention CO2 in its list of demands because of the bank-funded carbon trading stock markets run by corporations.
*Obama has not mentioned the crisis in the last two State of the Unions addresses.
*Julian Assange is of course a climate change denier.
*Canada killed Y2Kyoto with a freely elected climate change denying prime minister and nobody cared, especially the millions of scientists warning us of unstoppable warming (a comet hit).
Meanwhile, the entire world of SCIENCE, lazy copy and paste journalism and Liberal progressivism had allowed bank-funded and corporate-run “CARBON TRADING STOCK MARKETS”(ruled by trustworthy politicians) to trump the UN's and entire world's efforts into 3rd world fresh water relief, starvation rescue and 3rd world education for just over 26 years of insane attempts at climate CONTROL.
Climate change was exaggerated. Be happy.
It's idiotic 'studies' like this that gives scientists - real ones - a bad image.
Try this mental exercise and come to your own conclusion:
You are a cold-water fish. Your water is getting warmer (not by much, but we'll let that slide for now), and you need more oxygen to grow and function properly. What do you do? Stay where you are and suffer, or swim to cooler waters (which lie just north of where you are)? The fish aren't where they are because it's their 'homeland' and they're just lucky that the environment is perfect for them. They are where they are because of the environment, and when it changes, they will move accordingly. At least that's what all forms of life have been doing for eons.
Enjoy your fish and chips. Don't forget the malt vinegar, and remember to eat your peas.
Reality has a liberal bias.
Reading be a luxury and there is an old wise political saying or two created by the man who created the "American 'National Academy of Sciences' ".
They go like so :-
"Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt!."
"You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today."
"You may deceive all the people part of the time, and part of the people all the time, but not all the people all the time."
Such is life!
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