From the department of obvious science and anything to do with climate change must be bad comes this study from Australian National University:
Waves costly for fish
Big waves are energetically costly for fish, and there are more big waves than ever. The good news is that fish might be able to adapt.
“There has been a lot of recent work in oceanography documenting the fact that waves are becoming more frequent and more intense due to climate change,” says Mr Dominique Roche, PhD candidate from the Research School of Biology. “The habitats that fish live in are changing.”
“This is not a localised problem, but something that is documented globally,” adds Ms Sandra Binning, also a PhD candidate in the Research School of Biology.
Mr Roche and Ms Binning are co-authors on a study documenting the energy it takes for fish to swim through large, intense waves. Specifically, they focused on fish that swim with their arm, or pectoral fins, which are very common on both rocky and coral reefs.
“By controlling water flow in an experimental chamber with the help of a computer, we were able to replicate oscillations in the water flow like in a wave pool,” explains Mr Roche.
“We looked at how much energy the fish consumed while swimming without waves, in conditions with small waves, and in conditions with large waves. The idea was to compare the amount of energy that fish consume while swimming in these three conditions when their average swimming speed was exactly the same.”
Mr Roche and Ms Binning found that it’s a lot more energetically demanding for fish to deal with large fluctuations in water speed and wave height.
“It’s harder to constantly switch speeds than it is to remain at a constant speed, like a runner changing between running and walking during interval training versus a steady jog. Well, it’s the same for swimming fish,” says Mr Roche.
“Things could get tough for fish in windy, exposed habitats if waves get stronger with changing climate. But there may be a silver lining,” says Ms Binning.
“In the swim chamber, when the water flow increased, fish had to beat their fins faster to keep up. But when the water flow slowed down, some fish took advantage and rode the wave. Essentially, rather than beating their fins frantically, these fish used the momentum that they had gained while speeding up to glide and save energy.
“This means that some individuals are better at dealing with waves than others, and that there is hope for populations to adapt their swimming behavior to potentially changing conditions in the future,” concludes Mr Roche.
Their research was recently published in the Journal of Experimental Biology. View footage of the study species, Cymatogaster aggregata in the swim chamber.
Source: http://news.anu.edu.au/2014/02/03/waves-costly-for-fish/
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Gosh, climate change will cause exhausted fish in the future, because as we all know, fish just can’t adapt to a changing environment; nature so poorly equipped them that something like a change in waves in the ocean will just muck up the whole population, because fish just can’t swim deeper to avoid surface turbulence, or something.
And, because this one species of fish is surely representative of all species and good enough to make a climate change with global ramifications related press release out of. Never mind this fact:
The shiner perch (Cymatogaster aggregata) is a common surfperch found in estuaries, lagoons, and coastal streams along the Pacific coast from Alaska to Baja California. It is the sole member of its genus.
…
They are one of the most common fish in the bays and estuaries of their range, favoring beds of eelgrass, and often accumulating around piers as well. They feed on zooplankton such as copepods, but have been observed to bottom feed as well.
Cuz, well, the bays and estuaries are connected to the ocean, and the ocean has waves, and they are getting bigger. And because, somehow, a bottom fish will be more affected by waves on the surface.
I downloaded the footage of the study species, Cymatogaster aggregata in the swim chamber, and have made it available here:
This is what passes for science now; it looks like a high school science fair project. Note the propeller. What I see is the velocity of water changing due to the propeller, an enclosed box, and no waves, i.e. an unnatural environment. As Willis is often fond of pointing out, an aquarium tank is not the ocean, and behavior of an animal in an artificially controlled setting is no guarantee it models reality, even in the slightest. This doesn’t even look like a good model, because the fish is movement constricted, and can’t change its depth.
I assume they are basing their work on this study, also from Australian National University:
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Global Trends in Wind Speed and Wave Height
Science, Vol. 332 no. 6028 pp. 451-455 DOI: 10.1126/science.1197219
- I. R. Young*, S. Zieger, A. V. Babanin
*To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: ir.young@anu.edu.au
Studies of climate change typically consider measurements or predictions of temperature over extended periods of time. Climate, however, is much more than temperature. Over the oceans, changes in wind speed and the surface gravity waves generated by such winds play an important role. We used a 23-year database of calibrated and validated satellite altimeter measurements to investigate global changes in oceanic wind speed and wave height over this period. We find a general global trend of increasing values of wind speed and, to a lesser degree, wave height, over this period. The rate of increase is greater for extreme events as compared to the mean condition.
Then there’s this little gem in the paper:
That paper is contested on the basis of that table:
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/334/6058/905.2.abstract
Comment on “Global Trends in Wind Speed and Wave Height”
Frank J. Wentz*, Lucrezia Ricciardulli
Young et al. (Reports, 22 April 2011, p. 451) reported trends in global mean wind speed much larger than found by other investigators. Their report fails to reference these other investigations and does not discuss the consequences that such large wind trends would have on global evaporation and precipitation. The difference between their altimeter and buoy trends suggests a relatively large trend error.
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Of course this new paper on waves make fish swim harder [Unsteady flow affects swimming energetics in a labriform fish (Cymatogaster aggregata) ] from ANU is published in the same journal (Journal of Experimental Biology) that says ocean acidification will make damselfish go blind: Ocean acidification will interfere with fish eyes
But what I find most interesting is that the original abstract doesn’t even MENTION climate change:
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Unsteady flow affects swimming energetics in a labriform fish (Cymatogaster aggregata)
Abstract
Unsteady water flows are common in nature, yet the swimming performance of fishes is typically evaluated at constant, steady speeds in the laboratory. We examined how cyclic changes in water flow velocity affect the swimming performance and energetics of a labriform swimmer, the shiner surfperch, Cymatogaster aggregata, during station holding. Using intermittent-flow respirometry, we measured critical swimming speed (Ucrit), oxygen consumption rates (ṀO2) and pectoral fin use in steady flow versus unsteady flows with either low- [0.5 body lengths (BL) s−1] or high-amplitude (1.0 BL s−1) velocity fluctuations, with a 5 s period. Individuals in low-amplitude unsteady flow performed as well as fish in steady flow. However, swimming costs in high-amplitude unsteady flow were on average 25.3% higher than in steady flow and 14.2% higher than estimated values obtained from simulations based on the non-linear relationship between swimming speed and oxygen consumption rate in steady flow. Time-averaged pectoral fin use (fin-beat frequency measured over 300 s) was similar among treatments. However, measures of instantaneous fin use (fin-beat period) and body movement in high-amplitude unsteady flow indicate that individuals with greater variation in the duration of their fin beats were better at holding station and consumed less oxygen than fish with low variation in fin-beat period. These results suggest that the costs of swimming in unsteady flows are context dependent in labriform swimmers, and may be influenced by individual differences in the ability of fishes to adjust their fin beats to the flow environment.
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So, maybe the whole climate change meme is an addition for the purposes of press release, to gain attention, either way, it all seems fishy to me.
“There has been a lot of recent work in oceanography documenting the fact that waves are becoming more frequent and more intense due to climate change”.
The fact that a lot of money has spent on this is startling in and of itself. think of the billions of dollars being spent to “link” any topic of interest to “climate change” so as to support the livelihood of tens of thousands of researchers that could be employed doing something more productive like solving desertification, greening the sahel, providing cheap energy to the poor, food to the starving, clean water, health benefits.
Its a colossal waste of resources!
For all of the bad in the design, at least this “study” used a “real” fish instead of a computer simulation of a fish.
Way back in the day when I was “debating” folks like William Connolly on UseNet, someone linked a report that the coelacanth’s days were numbered due to…wait for it….climate change.
Right. A fish that somehow, someway, without the earnest assistance of the UN, the WWF and the Sierra Club, managed to survive 400 million years of climate change, much of which was rather catastrophic to other living creatures, is in trouble due to….climate change.
The stupid! It hurts!
Not the scientists. They are actually making a living with complete nonsense. That is kinda smart. Otherwise they might have to actually work for a living and figure out how to be valuable to society.
The ‘stupid’ resides with those who fund and publish such nonsense, with the pal-reviewers and with the angry environmentalists with their fists in the air and their heads in the sand (to paraphrase Billy Joel).
Fish abuse! And speaks to Lindzenn’s point about the rigor and intellect of Climate Science. The sad thing is that these newly-minted PhD’s are going to be teaching someone’s children somewhere in the near future. Ugh.
Yup, that’s why I just duck my head under water and let the big waves pass by; all I notice is a slight change in the water’s motion and pressure.
I think they need to explain how bigger waves affect bigger fish, like that shark that a lady photographed swimming parallel to the beach…
Global warming is causing waves to getting bigger and surface wind speeds to slow down. Oh what are we going to do? Now, where are those windmills I keep hearing about?
Wrong little gem. The real little gem is the tag of sentence in the previous paragraph, where they are apparently admitting that they cannot resolve the supposedly “significant” increases they discover as an actual accelerating trend or as being purely natural multidecadal oscillation variation. So the entire paper is about ascribing the increase to a cause that the paper itself openly admits cannot be so ascribed. Yes, the jet stream, the multidecadal oscillations, Hadley circulation, and many other things are not stationary. No we do not have adequate measurements over a sufficiently long time span to do more than identify local trends. God knows how they decide whether or not the trend is “significant”, since significance can only be determined after subtracting the unknown natural trend (otherwise we’ll be claiming that the variation of sinusoid functions plus noise is “significantly increasing” when the phase angle happens to be near 0). I’m even dubious of the length of the data series and/or the sampling. ARGO doesn’t really span this interval, and AFAIK there is no actual evidence that e.g. mean surface wind speed is varying on a planetwide basis. If so, it is strangely unreflected in the violence or frequency of storms, the size of the tides, etc.
I’d be very interested in seeing how dominant rare, large scale but regional events are in their analysis of “significance” as well. With only 20-odd years in the study and no real knowledge of the variance (the sample isn’t big enough for the variance to have even stabilized!) one or two extreme events could explain all of the “significance” at e.g. higher latitudes. That is, the polar storms of the 2000’s that broke up the ice pack could well be the major cause of the significant rise in wave activity, but it is WAY EARLY to conclude that polar storms are more becoming more frequent in some systematic way that hasn’t happened before. Such as back in the 1930’s, my own favorite candidate for the warmest decade of the 20th century, when half the state high temperature records were set and when it was widely reported that the Arctic was nearly ice-free and navigible, when super-ENSOs were creating the US Dust Bowl (and presumably dumping cone-head quantities of heat into the atmosphere like the 1997-1998 ENSO did). All without significant forcing from CO_2.
Signal? Noise? Natural? Anthropogenic? Not even the paper knows. Everything derived from this non-conclusion is sheer speculation, especially conclusions concerning the biological impact of increased waves if wave activity has really increased at all compared to even the recent geological past. Surface wave action has far more impact on water chemistry than it does on fish stress. More CO_2 is dissolved out of the air. More air is dissolved out of the air. More water is evaporated from the increased surface area by the faster winds (altering the water temperature). The albedo of the water is altered. The transport of nutrients and plankton is altered. But all fish cope with whitecap waves and storms in all oceans or they don’t survive, because the natural variability of storms anywhere year to year greatly exceeds the supposed might-be-a-trend-or-might-not, ask again later reported by this paper. Claiming that fish are or really even MIGHT BE, biologically stressed by the unconfirmed trend is bullshit. In my opinion, of course.
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It must be making them dizzy, too. Poor fish …
I assume this piece was lifted from “The Onion”.
This could provide the sequel to Sharknado: Conan Fish!
What big waves don’t kill, they make stronger, much stronger…
Gosh, this must be like what happens when an aircraft has to fly against a “head wind”…it has to work so hard. NO WAIT, the GROUNDSPEED is effected, but nothing else. WAVES CARRY NO MASS in the open ocean. And these DUMMIES are worried about something in LAGOONS and BAYS??? Get the guys with the WHITE JACKETS. Put them in the padded cells before they HURT themselves!
All they have to do is swim down.
Haven’t they seen ‘Finding Nemo”?
The pair should be denied a PhD and their supervisors fired on the grounds of utter stupidity..
As a non-scientist, I usually hesitate to comment much, but it seems to me that the data derived measures a short-term impact, and extrapolates the wrong long-term outcome. The fish in the test are being suddenly exposed to stronger currents. Thus they must swim harder, and no doubt some fish might die from exhaustion. However the theory proposes that currents or wave action will gradually increase over time. Thus, the fish will adapt their behavior over time and will also be selected through evolution for those best suited to the new conditions. We know that some fish are well adapted to live in rapid currents – Brook Trout come immediately to mind.
Mr Dominique Roche need not fret. As every child nowadays knows, the fish have allready solved the problem as demonstrated by the advice: “Just keep on swimming.”
An interesting study that seems to show that, without even trying, fish are smarter than PhD candidates.
“There has been a lot of recent work in oceanography documenting the fact that waves are becoming more frequent and more intense due to climate change,”
Beyond parody.
What a load of crap and waste of time. Grrrrrrrr. They haven’t provided anything useful I’m afraid, sorry. Now here is something useful from the halls of global warming. Take your pick.
Wind speed to speed up
Wind speed slows down
Wind speed to speed up then slow down
I’d suggest that our doctoral candidate change majors to something she can handle. Based on her experimental design, I’d suggest puppitry.
This seems more like a party fund than science.
1. Don’t have beer money for the year
2. Apply for grant money, use global warming to increase chances of approval
3. Get grant, buy lots of Fosters
4. Invite women over for weekly parties and get wasted
5. Fabricate test apparatus using $10 worth of materials, save last fish you were going to swallow for experiement
6.Write global warming paper
7. Get drunk again to celebrate passing peer review, thank self that peers were invited to get drunk also.
Maybe the fish need little bicycles…
Great, to the point commentary & observations, Anthony !
… And yet this paper made it through the peer review process. Could there be a harsher indictment of the current system of peer review ?
Forgive me but I was under the impression that waves do not move water, they transfer energy. When a wave moves across an ocean the only movement in the water is up and down.
This is outrageous. We should destroy the moon to reduce tidal forces so that the fish are saved.