Hypoxia Expert On Atlantic Dead Zones: "We're Simply Not Going To Have Those Fisheries"
LRK: Because it looks as though there are more fish there. I’m looking at a map of the Atlantic Ocean between the west coast of Africa and the east coast -- the part of South America that juts out. It’s showing that this hypoxia, this dead zone, is huge. This is not just along the coastline; this zone is a very wide band across the entire Atlantic. How do we stop this?
EP: I’m not sure we do. The thing that fuels a lot -- but I’ve never read it in a peer-reviewed paper -- is the fact that dissolved oxygen in the oceans is inversely related to temperature. The higher the temperature, the less dissolved oxygen that can be driven into the ocean.
LRK: So with climate change ...
EP: It’s getting warmer, and the surface water temperatures have been predicted by climate models to increase as much as even 5 degrees Celsius by the end of this century. I was in a meeting in London called Planet Under Pressure, and a very well-known scientist who’s really a leader in the world on hypoxia, Robert Diaz, gave a talk. I asked the question afterward: “All the projections of the temperature increase by 5 degrees Celsius -- but if it even increases by half that amount, what would you predict in terms of the growth of the oxygen minimum zone? What about our pelagic fisheries?”
I was really shaken by his response. He said, “The oxygen minimum zone in the Atlantic is going to start in North Africa and go all the way down to the tip of South Africa. It’s going to cover every single part of the eastern South American coast. We’re simply not going to have those fisheries.”
EDIT/END
http://www.splendidtable.org/story/biologist-dead-zones-in-the-ocean-are-threatening-our-most-important-food-fish
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