Climate Change Might Be Turning Us Into Chesapeake Bay

Fifty of years of data from weekly trawls by fisheries biologists at the University of Rhode Island seem to indicate that our southern New England estuaries are slowly turning into mid-Atlantic estuaries – Narragansett Bay is becoming more like Chesapeake Bay.

Science Daily reported the other day that the URI scientists have documented a clear, long-term shift in the species that inhabit not just Narragansett Bay but the nearby waters of the Atlantic as well.

It’s the same kind of shift the Connecticut DEP biologists have seen over 25 years in Long Island Sound. And just as in the Sound, the URI biologists attribute the change to global warming. It was discussed at the Long Island Sound Citizen Summits in 2006 (which I wrote about here) and again in 2008 (read it here).

Here are some excerpts from Science Daily:

According to Jeremy Collie, professor of oceanography at the University of Rhode Island's Graduate School of Oceanography, the fish community has shifted progressively from vertebrate species (fish) to invertebrates (lobsters, crabs and squid) and from benthic or demersal species -- those that feed on the bottom -- to pelagic species that feed higher in the water column. In addition, smaller, warm-water species have increased while larger, cool-water species have declined.

"This is a pretty dramatic change, and it's a pattern that is being seen in other ecosystems, including offshore on Georges Bank and other continental shelf ecosystems, but we're in the relatively unique position of being able to document it. These patterns are likely being seen in estuaries around the world, but nowhere else has similar data," said Collie. …

Collie said that while most of the changes occurred slowly, an abrupt change appeared to take place in 1980 and 1981 when benthic species like winter flounder and silver hake declined and pelagic species including butterfish and bluefish increased. …

… he believes that climate is "the dominant signal." Sea surface temperature in the area of the trawls has increased by 2 degrees Centigrade since 1959, and the preferred temperature of the fish caught in the trawls has also increased by 2 degrees C.

"That seems to be direct evidence of global warming," he said. "It's hard to explain any other way." …

What do these changes mean for the future of Narragansett Bay?

"Our overall prediction is that Narragansett Bay is soon going to resemble estuaries to the south of us -- Delaware Bay, Chesapeake Bay -- so we'll experience what they are experiencing now," Collie said. "It will continue to get warmer and attract more southern species, such as blue crabs. Species that couldn't complete their life cycle here before may be able to do that now."

The Science Daily article is here.

I have no idea if becoming more like Chesapeake Bay is a good thing or a bad thing. I do remember, though, that I've been told more than once that people don't swim in the Chesapeake because there are too many jellyfish. Coincidentally there's a talk tomorrow afternoon at Yale by Dr. Richard Brodeur, of NOAA's Northwest Fisheries Science Center, on "Climate Change and the Role of Jellyfish in Coastal Ecosystems."

It’s at 1 p.m. in room 102 of the Kline Biology Tower, 219 Prospect Street, New Haven.

No Shad

Back in the 1980s, the Soundkeeper sued Norwalk to get the city to upgrade its then-abominable sewage treatment plant. John Cronin, who was then the Hudson Riverkeeper, went to Norwalk to help announce the suit and, to drive his point home about how bad water quality was, said that at the upcoming Norwalk Oyster Festival, they wouldn't even be serving oysters from Norwalk.

I remembered that a decade later when someone told me that there were so few shad left in the Hudson that Cronin was on his way down to the Delaware River to buy shad to serve at Riverkeeper's annual Hudson River shad-fest.

And now another decade or so has past and the Riverkeeper's shad-fest has come to this: shad will be completely missing from the menu:

For the past few years, Riverkeeper, the Hudson River conservation group, has been easing the fish off the menu of the festival it stages in Garrison, N.Y. This year’s event, on May 18, will be completely shad-free.

The issue is simple conservation. Shad swim from the ocean to the upper reaches of rivers each spring to spawn. In the Hudson River, the number of shad has been dwindling because of overfishing and decades of environmental sins.

This year, some biologists predict the run might be the smallest in memory, prompting the state Department of Conservation to enact emergency restrictions on commercial and recreational shad fishing. The shad is the only Hudson River fish that can be sold commercially.

In a show of support for Riverkeeper’s decision, shad was taken off the menu at the Hudson River Maritime Festival May 10, too. Their motto: Please don’t eat the shad. Save the shad.

Sad.

If you want to read something else that is sad, in retrospect, read William Warner's Beautiful Swimmers: Watermen, Crabs and the Chesapeake Bay. Sad because the incredible bounty he wrote about 40 years ago has been so severely compromised, in the same way that the Hudson has been compromised by the loss of shad and Long Island Sound compromised by the loss of lobsters. I read Warner's book while I was working on mine, just as I read Bob Boyle's The Hudson River: A Natural and Unnatural History. Warner died yesterday at age 88.