Many important commercial fisheries are more resilient to heatwaves than previously thought, a study has found.
The research suggests that the ocean could be less vulnerable to some effects of climate change than had been feared, although, the researchers added, each rise in temperatures would still be “rolling the dice”.
Scientists looked at almost 30 years of regular scientific surveys of bottom-dwelling fish such as cod and pollock in the North Atlantic, and compared that data with the water temperature in preceding months. The study was published in the journal Nature.
There have been well-documented incidents of heatwaves leading to collapses in fish stocks and phytoplankton – plant-like microbes that live in the upper layers of water – which had led the scientists to believe
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