http://www.examiner.com/article/ocean-life-reaction-to-climate-change-is-faster-than-land-life

 

A three year study led by University of California at Santa Barbara researchers published in the Aug. 4, 2013, issue of the journal Nature Climate Change has found that life in the world's oceans is reacting to climate change at a much faster rate than life on land.

 

The researchers found that ocean life is moving toward the poles at a rate of 45 miles per decade. This is 11 times as fast as the rate that terrestrial life is moving northward in response to increasing temperatures caused by climate change. The rate of increase in ocean temperature due to climate change is one third of the rate of increase in land temperature.

The importance of the findings is both economic and natural.

The movements of food fish away from their present habitats at an accelerated rate will change the food supply around the globe.

Peoples that derive their subsistence living from food fish will not be able to match the pace of food fish migration and will be forced to acquire different food sources. Commercial fishing will be forced to reorganize in an effort to keep pace with an increasingly distant fish population.

The survey of past published research involved scientists from 17 internationally recognized climate change organizations