Record ocean warming adds to dangers for native fish species, environment chief warns

Unprecedented warming of the oceans over the past year has widened the repercussions for marine life, including already dwindling native fish species such as Baltic Sea cod, an EU environment chief has warned.

The European commissioner for the environment, oceans and fisheries, Virginijus Sinkevičius, cited the migration of the cod towards colder waters near Russia and Norway as an example of the effect on biodiversity, speaking after an international oceans conference held in Athens.

It is estimated that about a third of the Mediterranean’s native marine species may also shift their habitats to deeper, cooler waters, while more invasive species such as blue crab and lionfish thrive in the warm waters.

“This can have far-reaching consequences for marine biodiversity and ecosystem dynamics in the region, as they can potentially outcompete native species,” Sinkevičius said in an interview with the Financial Times.

Sinkevičius noted that pollution from agricultural run-off and untreated urban wastewater were among the other causes that had fostered algal blooms that deplete oxygen and affect marine life.

The warming of the oceans has compounded not only the effects of this pollution but also decades of disastrous overfishing.

The global average sea surface temperature was 21.07C in March, the warmest on record for the 12th month in a row. Parts of the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean have also experienced their warmest annual average sea surface temperature on record.

Greece, as host country for the Our Ocean conference, launched as a US state department initiative by John Kerry in 2014, this week announced an expansion of its marine protected areas in the Ionian and Aegean seas.

Last year, after more than a decade of negotiations, 89 countries signed a UN High Seas Treaty that aimed to put 30 per cent of the seas into marine protected areas by 2030.

The EU and a group of 13 countries at the Athens conference this week sought to rally support for the formal ratification needed from a total of 60 of those countries to put the treaty into force.

“Achieving that [2030] goal is going to be one of the cornerstones of successfully rebuilding ocean abundance in the next few years,” said Alexandra Cousteau, senior adviser at the advocacy group Oceana and granddaughter of oceanographer Jacques Cousteau. “Because, honestly, I am deeply concerned that my children, who are eight and twelve, will be the generation of my family that writes the obituary for the oceans.”

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis this week outlined strategies in line with the treaty 2030 target, including an end to destructive fishing practices, such as bottom trawling, within its own marine protected areas, and the use of drones for monitoring.

But the treaty targets have not been adopted across the bloc, and the near-term economic implications for those who operate fishing enterprises were stressed by Sinkevičius, who referred to the need for support for sustainable fisheries.

Other vulnerable nations were more insistent on the need for urgent action, however. Jelta Wong, Papua New Guinea’s minister of fisheries and marine resources, noted that only 3 per cent of the ocean was protected now from fishing or other extractive activities, such as mining or drilling.

“We have done the calculations and to achieve 30 per cent in the next six years, we need 40 new marine protected areas to be created every day. How many were created yesterday? So the ambition is not at the level that we need,” Wong said.

He added that although 97 per cent of the ocean was open to fishing, fisheries had continued to collapse. “So the worst enemy of the fishermen is overfishing, not protected areas.”

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