From FIS – Worldnews and the warming omnipotence department comes this:
Climate change darkens water, drives fish away
Norwegian coastal waters are darkening due to changes in weather and climate, damaging optical conditions for marine animals.
Marine biologist Dag L Aksnes of the University of Bergen has analysed the impacts of these declining optical conditions with some funding from the Research Council of Norway’s research programme on the Oceans and Coastal Areas (HAVKYST). He explained that this occurs when coloured matter from rivers and lakes flows into the sea and mixes with salt water.
“This fresh water contains far more coloured dissolved organic matter (CDOM) than marine water, so our coastal waters are darkening,” explains Aksnes, the Research Cuncil reports.
Aksnes and his colleagues have been studying the Lurefjorden and Masfjorden fjords in northern Hordaland county on Norway’s western coast for many years.
While the fjords are similar and close to each other, Masfjorden contains far more seawater than Lurefjorden, which contains lower-salinity coastal water all the way down to its seabed. Although Masfjorden still has an ecosystem dominated by fish, the darker Lurefjorden has a greater abundance of the jellyfish Periphylla periphylla.
“Periphylla periphylla is a very light-sensitive jellyfish that thrives best in the world’s very deep marine waters,” continued Aksnes. “But the water in Lurefjorden has now become so murky and dark that it is probably helpingthis jellyfish to thrive. At the same time, the fjord has become less hospitable as a habitat for important fish species.”
Visibility conditions at Lurefjorden have made it more difficult for fish to find their prey, but not for the blindjellyfish. The jellyfish now have virtually no competition for the abundant prey organisms, Aksnes elaborated.
He highlighted that there is a clear correlation between poorer conditions for fish, the increase in jellyfish and the lasting changes in light conditions in the country’s coastal waters.
These conditions also affect algal photosynthesis and the production of organic compounds – which is why the researchers believe that light conditions impact most organisms.
The project demonstrates that changes normally linked to eutrophication (nutrient pollution) and human emissions of nutrients can also cause the water to become darker, reducing the abundance of attached algae such as seaweed and kelp while fueling the growth of planktonic algae.
Meanwhile, nutrient concentration climbs and oxygen saturation in the marine layers falls.
“More precipitation means that more murky fresh water mixes with the coastal water, making it less saline and murkier,” explained Aksnes.
“Furthermore, studies done at the University of Oslo indicate that increased precipitation and rising temperatures lead to changes in vegetation on land, which in turn increases the concentration of CDOM in the fresh water that mixes with the coastal water. We don’t know yet whether this leads to undesired changes in our coastal ecosystems, but if so, it will be hard to reverse,” the professor added.
h/t to Marc Morano of ClimateDepot.com
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More Three Bears science. At some point in time before today, conditions were just perfect, as they had been for unchanging millenia previously …
“there is a clear correlation between poorer conditions for fish, the increase in jellyfish and the lasting changes in light conditions”
And the evil CO2 is the culprit… yes, yes…
“We don’t know yet…” but we need a lot of funding
/sarc
Tauric waste, posing as scientific research, land use and deforestation are usually the culprits.
Lurefjord has a narrow opening, 200 mtr, to the open sea whereas the Masfjord has quite a wide mouth, stands to reason that the water replacement in the latter is much more thorough then the former. Any farm run off will therefor remain in the Lurefjord and darken the water much more then in the Masfjord. On top of that the Lurefjord has a shallow bar in the opening, 20 mtr, this would indeed lead to minimal water changes compared to the Masfjord. What is being proposed is quite possible and totally human related, more farm runoff and nutrients will remain in the Lurefjord as the tide will not take it all out to sea with every tide change.
Not sure what they mean with similar fjords, they appear to be quite different. Lurefjord is almost a lake with a number of narrow arms.
The rainfall in the area has not increased to such extend that one would expect to see the mentioned and feared for change in vegetation, about 5% more in recent years, but why a change in vegetation would increase dark matter is beyond me. Removing vegetation normally results in loss of top soil and runoff not a change in the type of vegetation.
However it also needs to be said that this type of jellyfish always enters the Lurefjord in April anyway, so it may now stay there a bit longer or perhaps permanent due to the darker water, the dark matter is human related, not climate related.
And indeed, fish like clear water so why go somewhere where you can’t see your food?
That is a bit like hunting in the driving snow, can’t see your prey so you find an area where it does not snow.
Stop farming around Lurefjord and all will improve.
Of course it could have nothing to do with the fact that Norway is the largest exporter of oil and natural gas per capita outside the middle east; oil being the commodity that maintains those nice Norwegians’ stellar standard of living and sense of moral superiority: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_gW6m-AmYrqo/THdk2EasjmI/AAAAAAAADSw/xTGivY-TGn8/s1600/statoil-map.jpg
here in the UK we tend to fish for most species at night when catch rates are higher…. one of the best venues for big cod is the upper Bristol Channel which is nearly always the colour of chocolate so that day/night makes little difference.
We don’t fish for jellyfish.
I KNOW that this is incredibly puerile, but my inner child simply can’t resist telling you all that in Australian parlance a ‘Dag’ is lump that hangs off the arse of a sheep!
Well that’s all well and fine but what about the genocidal onslaught against the much maligned Crown of Thorns Starfish? This poor sea creature is being targeted by the Ozzies because it is doing what it does, eat coral. There is something wrong in a world that decides coral is more attractive to humans than a starfish based entirely on a species centric view of what is nice. What comes next, kill off ugly humans? Put dust into the atmosphere to jazz up sunsets?
Nature does what it does and yet here we go again trying to make nature do something just because we think it’s pretty. How quickly we have forgotten that rabbit incident in Oz.
I didn’t realise it might be fear – I though the fish were shaking cos of the cold! LOL
I wish I new what drugs that they are taking because they should tell there doctor before it is to late please can sombody help them
This year Norway has more snow which took longer to melt off giving a longer spring melt time so more farm run off and, since Norway has an abundance of igneous and metamorphic rocks, more clay minerals washed into the ffiords. Mixing with salt or brackish water causes floculation of clay minerals which would help to give the conditions described.
Maybe….the unsighted jellyfish are beating the vision impaired fish with their white walking canes.
The drainage basin of Masfjorden is much larger and includes several snow-capped mountain ranges. The water in Lurefjorden comes from low moorland of limited area. From these facts alone, can you predict which of the two will have water that looks like tea? Which of them drains faster?
There is no agricultural run-off anywhere near the area discussed.
I don’t see anything wrong in studying the ecosystem of this fjord system, it definitely is something unique because of the way it’s closed off from the ocean. The AGW twist to it is probably something the researcher (sadly!) had to do to receive funding.
Living by a Norwegian fjord myself, I’ve seen with my own eyes how the water gets darker during rainy summers, due to high contents of iron and biological matter in runoffs from not only agriculture and broken sewage systems, but (to a large extent, I think) peat- and marshlands, but it doesn’t take many days of dry weather to clear the water again – the fjord discussed in this paper is a very special case.
Is it getting wetter, then? Yes, according to official statistics, the last 30 years have been quite a bit wetter than the preceding 80 years: http://eklima.met.no/metno/trend/RRA_G0_0_1000_NO.jpg
OMG! This is shocking news, disastrous news even. Surface water run-off flowing into streams which then flow into meandering rivers which flow out into esturine waters, depsositing vast ampunts of scoured silt material all the way in land, & some of the soils have different colours too! All through AGW!!! It’s worse than we thought, clearly! It’s never happened before, ever, never, ever, never, ever, never! Sarc off! Now, where is that satellite photo of the esturine forces at work from the Amazon River? Dispair! 🙁
Another one for John Brignell’s list of things caused by global warming.
http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm
This problem has already been solved by the Angler fish about 100 million years ago, and they use low energy light bulbs.
son of mulder said on November 20, 2012 at 4:22 am:
How primitive!
Coming soon from a genetics lab near you, after it’s decided “adapting to climate change” should include modifying organisms to withstand the otherwise-devastating effects of global warming, like darker water:
http://images.neopets.com/items/vor_radarfish.gif
Pseudo-science! Every marine biologist worth his salt (pun intended) knows deltas and marshes are the PRIMARY nurseries for in shore, near shore, and offshore fish populations. Some of the best fishing in the world is in the Mississippi River delta, where the water looks like muddy Coca Cola.
The real question is how did deltas and coastal plains form before we had all this evil catastrophic global warming?!
Let me guess: every December, when the sunlight disappears from the fjords completely and 24 hours a day of total darkness ensues, all the fish become extinct.
News from here (UK)..we planted too many (imported) trees you know why, and now many of them are infected and are likely to die in large numbers. Another forest scare, but this time we can’t blame AGW, on the contrary. Sonja B-C
Sonja, it is certainly sad to see the trees die, but people planting them all over the island made me laugh more than once. When I arrived in Scotland in 2007, I was stunned to see palm trees growing in people’s yards. The tallest ones appeared to be 15-20 years old. Haven’t been there for a couple years, but I suspect they are all gone now. The last ones in Cambridge died last winter; most of those still around in London seem to be dead or nearly dead; those in Brighton are still ok — but I wouldn’t bet on them lasting much longer.
So nutrient run-off affects water quality which affects fish populations, some of which have significant economic consequences. I see nothing controversial in that analysis. I’ll even accept the hypothesis that the change in nutrient run-off is almost certainly human-caused. I have more difficulty with the jump to the conclusion that the change in nutrient run-off was solely or even primarily the result of temperature/precipitation changes without excluding alternative hypotheses such as land-use changes, farming/forestry practices, etc.
If I’m reading the maps right, these two fjords are only about 10 km apart. Lurefjorden appears to show developed land all around it while Masfjorden shows more wooded shores. 10 km does not seem to be a plausible difference to suspect that global climate change will have a significant differential impact. Am I missing something here?
Is it getting wetter, then? Yes, according to official statistics, the last 30 years have been quite a bit wetter than the preceding 80 years: http://eklima.met.no/metno/trend/RRA_G0_0_1000_NO.jpg
You can thank the UK’s shift from coal to gas and the introduction of catalytic converters, reducing aerosols blown across the North Sea.
It’s hilarious all the things they cook up that’s attributed to global warming.