The Baltic Sea offers a preview of what's to come with global warming

[Eugene]

Source: Washington Post

The Baltic Sea offers a preview of what’s to come with global warming

By Luisa Beck December 2 at 11:48 AM

KIEL, Germany — The herring here — both a symbol of the seaside region and a staple food that locals eat salted, pickled or fried — have plummeted to about a third of their population in the 1990s.

Cod have declined drastically, too. And they are getting smaller and thinner. Scientists have observed fish in their samples whose white fatty underbellies had all but disappeared. “They just looked like they were starving,” marine ecologist Jan Dierking said.

Then came this past summer’s heat wave, which increased Baltic Sea temperatures to an unprecedented 80.6 degrees Fahrenheit, killing starfish and other fragile marine creatures.

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That is in part due to the Baltic’s small size: It is roughly the size of California, or 1/250th of the Atlantic. It is also tucked between nine countries — including Sweden to the North, Russia to the East and Germany to the South — whose residents pollute and dump waste into, travel over and swim through its delicate marine ecosystems.

As a result, conditions have been changing rapidly. The temperature of the Baltic has risen at roughly three times the average rate of global oceans over the past decade. It has experienced a tenfold expansion of no-oxygen “dead zones” that wipe out fish and their habitats in the past 115 years. And it is seeing increasing levels of acidification.

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Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/the-baltic-sea-offers-a-preview-of-whats-to-come-with-global-warming/2018/11/29/f52f470a-95c3-11e8-818b-e9b7348cd87d_story.html

[bronxiteforever]

1. Kick and recommend for visibility.

[blue-wave]

2. We are messing

up big time. Killing everything and possibly even ourselves.

[pansypoo53219]

3. i happened to see an old 50's fish harvest clip on some PBS show. the fish WERE SO MUCH BIGGER.

we are eating the seed corn.