Warming drives off Cape's cod
Source: Agencies |
November 13, 2009, Friday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
American fishermen have known for years that they've had to steam farther and farther from shore to find the cod, haddock and winter flounder that typically fill dinner plates in New England.
A new federal study documenting the warming waters of the North Atlantic confirms they're right - and the typical meal could eventually change to the Atlantic croaker, red hake and summer flounder normally found to the south.
"Fishermen are businessmen, so if they have to go farther and deeper to catch the fish that we like to eat, eventually it won't be economical to do that," said Janet Nye, a fishery biologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the lead author of the study.
For the study, which appeared in the journal Marine Ecology Progress Series, Nye and three other NOAA biologists analyzed water temperature trends from North Carolina to the Canadian border off Maine from 1968 to 2007. They then looked at fish survey data collected each spring and assessed where the fish were caught and how abundant they were.
Of the 36 stocks studied, the distribution range of 24 of them had changed.
The greatest movement was exhibited by the blackbelly rosefish, which moved more than 320 kilometers to the northeast. Among commercial species, southern stocks of yellowtail flounder had moved more than 160 kilometers.
Small-boat fishermen on Cape Cod caught most of their haddock and flounder, as well as the peninsula's namesake fish, in waters close to shore 20 years ago, said Tom Dempsey, of the Cape Cod Commercial Hook Fishermen's Association. Nowadays, they have to travel as far as 160 kilometers offshore to find those same fish, he said.
A new federal study documenting the warming waters of the North Atlantic confirms they're right - and the typical meal could eventually change to the Atlantic croaker, red hake and summer flounder normally found to the south.
"Fishermen are businessmen, so if they have to go farther and deeper to catch the fish that we like to eat, eventually it won't be economical to do that," said Janet Nye, a fishery biologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the lead author of the study.
For the study, which appeared in the journal Marine Ecology Progress Series, Nye and three other NOAA biologists analyzed water temperature trends from North Carolina to the Canadian border off Maine from 1968 to 2007. They then looked at fish survey data collected each spring and assessed where the fish were caught and how abundant they were.
Of the 36 stocks studied, the distribution range of 24 of them had changed.
The greatest movement was exhibited by the blackbelly rosefish, which moved more than 320 kilometers to the northeast. Among commercial species, southern stocks of yellowtail flounder had moved more than 160 kilometers.
Small-boat fishermen on Cape Cod caught most of their haddock and flounder, as well as the peninsula's namesake fish, in waters close to shore 20 years ago, said Tom Dempsey, of the Cape Cod Commercial Hook Fishermen's Association. Nowadays, they have to travel as far as 160 kilometers offshore to find those same fish, he said.
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