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.
As a Marine fish and invertebrate biologist, I agree. It’s only been happening since the planet started cooling. Major meteor strikes changed things quite quickly, in earth history terms. It’s all a bunch of Media hype, that is now so widespread, that it would seem things are changing quickly now, but it’s just a change in perception. Nothing else.
Looking at Pinsky’s research, it looks dominated by the same non-ethical conjecture as any other warmist scientist who’s funding is based on fear-mongering. It’s all about what “may” happen, what “future projections” are, “if” the climate changes as much as projected by other warmists.
Perfect guy for the Daily Beast to get hot opinion quotes from.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-24510-z
The research and paper in Nature was out of East Carolina University. You’re not suggesting the researchers are stupid or dishonest, are you?
What part of their research do you dispute? That the measures of ocean temperature are flawed? That the juvenile shark numbers they say they caught were faked?
Hundreds of scientific journal articles support the concept that global warming is causing shifts in flora and fauna ranges. Bull sharks too.
Anyway, the Daily Beast article emphasized that shark attacks weren’t the concern, saying in bold type, “Fears of increasing shark attacks are largely overblown.â€
That correlation is causation when it points to a politically charged and financially lucrative, media-sustained conclusion, but never when it undermines said conclusion?
I read the referenced study and amazed at the conclusion that water temperatures may be causing shark populations to rise. The area of temperature increase is infinitesimal during the time that the shark counts increase dramatically. The “percentage of temperatures above the minimum at which Bull Sharks were present (22 °C)” changes from about 0.55% to 0.56%, so 0.01%, during which the shark population skyrockets. I doubt the measurement errors are smaller than that, and likely much bigger.
There may be other factors at play here. I wonder if they investigated oxygen levels, farm nutrient runoff levels, siltation, marsh depletion, shellfish levels, shark food supply, predator levels, etc. These issues are non-trivial and their contributions should be weighed. Look at the Chesapeake bay, where the primary cause of shellfish depletion, and related fish depletion, and oxygen depletion, was from fertilizer runoff from Pennsylvania farming. Man could very well be causing changes that affect shark populations but drawing conclusions from just one variation of infinitesimal changes is doing a disservice to science and any ability to correct problems.
I recall and old book I read about commercial fisherman in the N. Atlantic. When they depleted the cod, they switched haddock. When they depleted the haddock and pollock they resorted to catching groundfish. When they depleted the groundfish, they were left with nothing to catch but dogfish and other small sharks and skates and “trash fish”. So dogfish fish counts went up. The point being that sometimes the changes in what we are catching comes from what we were catching. Then we get better at catching and say that the catch is as good as ever and the species is doing well. And I have watched the fish catching change drastically in NC over my lifetime. Besides overfishing for human food, one big factor is overfishing the menhaden for dog and cat food. The game fish rely on the menhaden for food, too. So, once again, looking at one small variable change and drawing conclusions seems very naive.