Image
Ecology and Vulnerability
Basking Shark
Photo Credit: Greg Skomal, NOAA Fisheries
Scientific name
Cetorhinus maximus
Profile: Basking Shark ▾▸
A growing number of studies provide strong evidence that marine fish and invertebrate species are responding to climate change through geographical range (Nye et al., 2009) and phenology shifts...
A growing number of studies provide strong evidence that marine fish and invertebrate species are responding to climate change through geographical range (Nye et al., 2009) and phenology shifts (Staudinger et al., 2019; Langan et al., 2021). Studies of range shifts generally use long-term federal datasets from spring and fall bottom trawl (NOAA Fisheries 2022) and ichthyoplankton Ecosystem Monitoring (EcoMon) (Walsh et al., 2015) surveys of the continental shelf, or by state and private surveys of regional bays and estuaries (Morson et al., 2019, Snyder et al., 2019; Langan et al., 2021). These extensive monitoring programs have shown that centers of population biomass for the majority of marine fish species are shifting poleward towards higher latitudes and to greater depths at rates that exceed terrestrial species (Lenoir et al., 2020). These general trends are projected to continue under future climate scenarios of modeled habitat abundance (Kleisner et al., 2017), suitable thermal habitat (Morley et al., 2018), and relative population biomass (Allyn et al., 2020).
An analysis of 42 species of marine fish and invertebrates (RSGCN and non-RSGCN species) found in continental shelf waters of the Northeast region between 1974 and 2022, showed the community has shifted on average 0.75 degrees (83.83 km) north during spring, and 0.61 degrees (68.27 km) north during fall. The community also experienced a change in average depth of 22.4 meters and 8.6 meters deeper in spring and fall, respectively (NOAA Fisheries 2022). Similar to patterns observed at the community scale and for non-RSGCN species, the direction, rate, and magnitude of range shifts varies widely among RSGCN marine fishes and elasmobranchs sampled during this period; responses in range changes span -0.51 km southward in Winter Skate, to 2.25 km northward in Black Sea Bass during spring, and -0.21 km northward in Atlantic Herring to 2.05 km northward in Black Sea Bass during fall. Depth range shifts spanned from -61.08 meters deeper in Atlantic Herring to 12.41 km shallower in Atlantic Cod in spring, and -50.88 meters deeper in Atlantic Herring to 31.20 meters shallower in Atlantic Halibut during fall (NOAA Fisheries 2022).
Shifts in phenology are more difficult to track in comparison to range shifts in aquatic species because observations need to have repeated observations within a narrow and set area over multiple decades (Staudinger et al., 2019). Several multi-species analyses have shown phenological shifts in the occurrence of larval phases of demersal groundfishes (Walsh et al., 2015), growth and productivity of population biomass (Henderson et al., 2017), as well as seasonal migration patterns (both ingress and egress) and residence times in estuaries systems such as Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island (Langan et al., 2021).
As species make distributional changes in range and phenology, primarily in response to warming sea surface and bottom temperatures, entire assemblages of marine species are reshuffling and reorganizing across Northeast coastal ecosystems (Weiskopf et al., 2020; Staudinger et al., 2021). Examples of changes in community structure through altered species diversity, population size, and density have been documented across the Northeast continental shelf (Friedland et al., 2020) and in estuaries including Little Egg Inlet, New Jersey (Morson et al., 2019), Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island (Langan et al., 2021), and Long Island Sound off of New York and Connecticut (Snyder et al., 2019). Ensembles of warm-water associated species that are moving north into temperate habitats are generally replacing cold-water associated species, which are moving to deeper depths and higher latitudes in search of cold water refugia (Friedland et al., 2020; Pershing et al., 2021).
On a global scale, warming has led to a decrease in body size (Sheridan and Bickford 2011) but this varies widely by species and local conditions. The indirect effects of morphological and behavioral changes combined with shifting distributions is changing predator-prey and competitive relationships among associated marine fish species and resulting in novel trophic interactions (Staudinger et al., 2021). Most models that project range shifts currently do not account for species interactions (Pearson and Dawson 2003, MacPherson et al., 2021); this is an area of active research as changes in trophic relationships are hypothesized to be more important for species survival under future conditions than environmental conditions (Louthan et al., 2015, Staniczenko et al., 2017). In addition, the combined stress from warming ocean temperatures, decreased dissolved oxygen, and ocean acidification is increasing the prevalence and vulnerability to disease and predation.
References
Allyn AJ, Alexander MA, Franklin BS, Massiot-Granier F, Pershing AJ, Scott JD, et al., (2020) Comparing and synthesizing quantitative distribution models and qualitative vulnerability assessments to project marine species distributions under climate change. PLoS ONE 15 (4): e0231595. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0231…
Friedland, K. D., Langan, J. A., Large, S. I., Selden, R. L., Link, J. S., Watson, R. A., & Collie, J. S. (2020). Changes in higher trophic level productivity, diversity and niche space in a rapidly warming continental shelf ecosystem. Science of the Total Environment, 704(135270).
Henderson, M. E., Mills, K. E., Thomas, A. C., Pershing, A. J., & Nye, J. A. (2017). Effects of spring onset and summer duration on fish species distribution and biomass along the Northeast United States continental shelf. Reviews in Fish Biology and Fisheries, 27(2), 411–424.
Kleisner, K., Fogarty, M., Mcgee, S., Hare, J., Morét, S., & Perretti, C. (2017). Marine species distribution shifts on the U.S. Northeast Continental Shelf under continued ocean warming. Prog. In Oceanogr, 153, 24–36.
Langan et al., 2021
Lenoir, J., Bertrand, R., Comte, L., Bourgeaud, L., Hattab, T., Murienne, J., & Grenouillet, G. (2020). Species better track climate warming in the oceans than on land. Nature Ecology & Evolution, 4(8), 1044–1059.
Louthan, A. M., Doak, D. F., & Angert, A. L. (2015). Where and when do species interactions set range limits? Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 30(12), 780–792.
MacPherson, M. P., Burgio, K. R., DeSaix, M. G., Freeman, B. G., Herbert, J., Herman, R., Jirinec, V., Shonfield, J., Slager, D. L., Rees, C. B., & Jankowski, J. E. (2021). Predicting Bird Distributions Under Climate Change. bioRxiv, 2021(5).
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Morson, J. M., Grothues, T., & Able, K. W. (2019). Change in larval fish assemblage in a USA east coast estuary estimated from twenty-six years of fixed weekly sampling. PLoS ONE, 14(10).
NOAA Fisheries. 2022. DisMAP data records. Retrieved from apps- st.fisheries.noaa.gov/dismap/DisMAP.html. Accessed 1/25/2024.
Nye, J. A., Link, J. S., Hare, J. A., & Overholtz, W. J. (2009). Changing spatial distribution of fish stocks in relation to climate and population size on the Northeast United States continental shelf. Marine Ecology-Progress Series, 393, 111–129.
Pearson, R. G., & Dawson, T. P. (2003). Predicting the impacts of climate change on the distribution of species: Are bioclimate envelope models useful? Global Ecology and Biogeography, 12(5), 361-1174 371.
Pershing, AJ, et al. 2021. Climate impacts on the Gulf of Maine ecosystem: A review of observed and expected changes in 2050 from rising temperatures. Elem Sci Anth, 9: 1. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/elementa.2020.000…
Sheridan, J. A., & Bickford, D. (2011). Shrinking body size as an ecological response to climate change. Nature Climate Change, 1, 401–406.
Snyder, J. T., Whitney, M. M., Dam, H. G., Jacobs, M. W., & Baumann, H. (2019). Citizen science observations reveal rapid, multi-decadal ecosystem changes in eastern Long Island Sound. Marine Environmental Research, 146, 80–88.
Staniczenko, P. P. A., Sivasubramaniam, P., Suttle, K. B., & Pearson, R. G. (2017). Linking macroecology and community ecology: Refining predictions of species distributions using biotic interaction networks. Ecology Letters, 20(6), 693–707.
Staudinger, M. D., Lynch, A. J., Gaichas, S. K., Fox, M. G., Gibson‐Reinemer, D., Langan, J. A., Teffer, A. K., Thackeray, S. J., & Winfield, I. J. (2021). How Does Climate Change Affect Emergent Properties of Aquatic Ecosystems? Fisheries, 46(9), 423–441. https://doi.org/10.1002/fsh.10606
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Walsh, H. J., Richardson, D. E., Marancik, K. E., & Hare, J. A. (2015). Long‐term changes in the distributions of larval and adult fish in the Northeast U.S. Shelf Ecosystem. PLoS ONE, 10(9), 0137382.
Weiskopf, S. R., Rubenstein, M. A., Crozier, L. G., Gaichas, S., Griffis, R., Halofsky, J. E., Hyde, K. J. W., Morelli, T. L., Morisette, J. T., Muñoz, R. C., Pershing, A. J., Peterson, D. L., Poudel, R., Staudinger, M. D., Sutton-Grier, A. E., Thompson, L., Vose, J., Weltzin, J. F., & Whyte, K. P. (2020). Climate change effects on biodiversity, ecosystems, ecosystem services, and natural resource management in the United States. Science of the Total Environment, 733(137782).