This is horrible. I’d hate for there to be some sort of crazy attack all because Other People had big carbon footprints
Sharks Are Creeping Into the Northeast Because of Climate Change
Warmer waters are pushing the animals further north into previously shark-free waters. Should we be worried?
Shark Week, Discovery Channel’s annual homage to the ocean’s most infamous predator, comes to a close this weekend.
But residents of northeastern states like New York—long considered a relatively shark-free zone—might not have to wait until July 2019 to see more, as global warming has been linked with a significant northern shift in the habitats of most marine animals, including most sharks.
“There’s an astounding mass migration of animal life towards the poles,â€Â Malin Pinsky, an associate professor in Rutgers’ Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Natural Resources, told The Daily Beast. In his work with spiny dogfish, a thin, small shark that lives along most of the East Coast, he’s seen their habitat shift “quite substantially.â€
Pinsky isn’t the only scientist to make this observation. In April, researchers in North Carolina published a paper in Nature’s Scientific Resources that documented the northern migration of bull shark nurseries.
By analyzing data from North Carolina’s Division of Marine Fisheries (NCDMF), the researchers found that between 2003 and 2011, when water temperatures in the sound were hovering closer to 22 degrees Celsius, only six juvenile sharks were caught in the area. But as temperatures began to rise, a group of bull sharks migrated from their previous home in Northern Florida and established a nursery in Pamlico, causing a drastic uptick in juvenile shark presence. Between 2011 and 2016 alone, NCDMF found 53.
They do realize that the scary attacks that occurred back in 2016 that inspired the book (followed by the movie) Jaws have been thought to be the work of a bull shark, right? And that bull shark range has been north of New Jersey for a long, long time, right? And that sharks have been off the coasts along the northeast for a long time, right? And that warming of oceans just proves warming, not anthropogenic causation, right?
This is simply scarmongering on the back of Shark Week. There have been sharks at the shore for always. I remember being at the beach in New Jersey and there being tiger sharks. Fortunately, rare. Tigers have a pretty far northward range. We’d be out surfing, and our boards would get tapped. It wasn’t a fish. Most likely a dogfish, sandbar shark, or blueshark investigating with a bump.
But, really, what else does the Cult of Climastrology have? Not actual science.
