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.
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Someone’s escaped from his echo chamber, and encountered the real world. Happens all the time…
More “Intense” waves?.
Probably missed something along the way but its not a measure I’ve ever heard used in relation to waves before.
Height, wave length, steepness, stuff like that. But intense?
Chris4692,
“Until you figure out how to do those measurements, you have nothing. These biologists have done some measurements to your none.”
The measurements they took are meaningless. The water in a wave is moving vertically, there is no lateral movement unless there is a separate current already in the body of water and any lateral movement comes strictly from the preexisting current. More extreme waves would have no impact on the lateral currents.
OK, Stupid non-scientist comment here.
The video isn’t simulated waves but simulation of intermittent current.
Waves in deep water move things in the sea in circular motion according to my school physics book it’s only in shallows where the “bottom” of the wave touches the sea bed that any motion occurs and then only according to the ebb and flow of water up and down the beach etc.
>>fish just can’t adapt to a changing environment.
Of course they cannot dive deeper, they have to be close to the surface to breathe.
Oh, wait a minute………
Re Terry Comeau says:
February 5, 2014 at 9:38 am
———
Actually “Waves” are variations in surface level caused by wind at that location. “Swell” is variations in surface level caused by wind at another location – which may be thousands of miles away, and usually is in the Southern Ocean. The actual motion of the particles in a wave of a swell is circular, and if I remember correctly, up and opposite to the direction of wave front motion as the wave approaches, then moving down as the wave passes, then forward at the bottom of the cycle, and up again as the next wave approaches. The amplitude of the circular motion decreases as the depth increases. At some level, anything from 50 to 200 m, depending on the size of the waves, the amplitude decreases to a negligible level .
However, this is for deep ocean waves. Closer to shore the bottom end of the circle is affected by friction with the sea bottom, and the circle is distorted, becoming closer to an “epicycle”, and eventually breaking.
I would suspect that fish tend to travel at a constant speed through the water, easier to observe prey, or escape a predator, no need to worry about trying to keep a constant speed in relation to coral or the sea bottom. Just like the TGV from Paris to Lyon, where the trains were originally supposed to maintain a maximum speed of 270 km/h. At one point, the line dipped and gravity assist meant that brakes had to be applied to keep the speed down to 270. Then power had to be applied to get to the top again at 270. Drivers complained, so SNCF permitted them to travel up to 280 km/h through that dip – result, energy saving, as the gravity assist on the down grade was returned on the upgrade. Likewise, fish do the speed they prefer.
I suggest that the study was done at the ANU’s famous School of Inconsequential Studies.
Indeed, there is little research on the sea waves …
… but some are interesting. For example (not only), on the coasts of France (Mediterranean) the biggest waves occurred in … LIA …
Shah-Hossein et al. (23.12.2013, http://www.schweizerbart.de/papers/zfg_suppl/detail/57/81545/Coastal_boulders_in_Martigues_French_Mediterranean_evidence_for_extreme_storm_waves_during_the_Little_Ice_Age ):
“The boulders occur up to 100 m inland from the present shoreline …” “Dating of the boulders shows age ranges that correspond to the Little Ice Age (LIA), thus suggesting a relationship between their deposition and the high storm frequency that characterized the LIA.”
The conclusion?
Fish (at the time – LIA), exhausted, were breathing intensively – more CO2, and …
… and therefore (inter alia, but mainly) ended the LIA …
Yet another example of “discovering” something that’s always happened, and always will happen, and becoming alarmed about it. Ozone “hole” anyone?
Thank you David L. Hagen for the link to Richard Feynman on scientific integrity in Cargo Cult Science 1974 Caltech. That was a great read!
These buoys have been accurately measuring 20 years worth of upturn in the SOI
( http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/cmb/teleconnections/soi-s-pg.gif )
as corroborated by total AAM as refected in LOD (figures 2b and 4b):
http://trs-new.jpl.nasa.gov/dspace/bitstream/2014/40555/1/01-2224.pdf
Nothing obviously anthropogenic about this necessarily cherry picked buoy data.
When SOI is high albatross and flying fish get a free ride. In fact the question arises, did the flying fish evolve their trait in flat water or high surf? And how does increased oxygenation when the SOI index is high affect marine ecology? It ought to reduce the “dead zones.” –AGF
Well known to most here, I presume, but still a welcome admission of the utterly disgraceful state of affairs in academic science. It’s also a reason why there are so many studies attributing all manner of phenomena to “climate change,” no matter how defined, or how local, or how fanciful.
Any time politics or political ideology starts directing science, corruption follows. Watching fish swim in a box may seem perfectly innocent, but that “tenuous” connection is a tiny instance of how political money corrupts the enterprise, and steers it in directions that can easily be antithetical to the method and integrity of science.
/Mr Lynn
We pay these oxygen thieves to come up with this cr&p?
Yes, it’s definitely ‘worse than we thought’!
Mike Jonas says:
I have experimental evidence that supports this paper. … I went surf fishing once, and I didn’t catch any. Now I know why.
I don’t buy that – I always have some sort of fish with surf & turf, and I’m pretty sure they’re not coming from the turf.
Seriously, though – it’s distressing that this is what’s accepted as science today. If this is where we are now, what hope is there for the future?
…. and I’m sure there will not be improved oxygenation of sea water due to more waves crashing on the beach, which won’t help the poor little fishies, either.
Where do these university research ideas get approved? Fail the Ph.D candidate, fire the faculty advisor, and hell, close the entire Department or college. That’s my policy remedy for such crap.
“This is what passes for science now”
A very sad observation. It is funny to laugh about it, but to think that this is a “paper” that appears in a journal that calls itself scientific, is peer reviewed and will be used as basis for further studies and references is what makes science now to be no less then a cards house built on sand.
And there are thousands of such useless papers.
Money wasted that could have gone for something useful. Science positions blocked with CAGW adepts who deliver only their “science”.
No wonder some truly scientific papers that contradict or simply raise some question marks to the belief can come only from countries that are not to the same level CAGW infested like china :
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/05/13/the-chinese-demonstrate-that-uhi-has-a-real-and-essential-effect-on-regional-climate-change/
and here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/01/29/important-study-on-temperature-adjustments-homogenization-can-lead-to-a-significant-overestimate-of-rising-trends-of-surface-air-temperature/
most of the western universities could simply not produce such papers simply due to the self imposed censure. They are blind to such and deny it exists.
The papers that they produce are exemplified in this post.
These are very alarming signs.
Waves are an up and down motion. Fish swimming horizontally aren’t impeded. Trashy science if the movie is the basis for the conclusions
“””””…..Chris4692 says:
February 5, 2014 at 6:30 pm
george e. smith says:
February 5, 2014 at 4:42 pm
I’ll get that right out to you Chris 4692; just as soon as I figure out how to make such measurements, without IN ANY WAY interfering in the fish’s absolute freedom of movement, and in their natural environment; you know, the one where the frequency of the waves is continually increasing due to climate change.
Until you figure out how to do those measurements, you have nothing. These biologists have done some measurements to your none. Until you actually do measurements, you are one of several million people that have watched little fishies swim around without adding anything to science. That several million people that have watched the fish swim likely includes these researchers, who may very well have made the same observations that you have but they did not write about it because it’s been done before……”””””
Well Chris, I’m not interested in attacking your point of view; or anyone else’s. Dunno about anyone else, But I come here to learn something; maybe help someone else learn something, or find out what others find interesting. but you do perhaps reveal something of how you (and perhaps other think).
Take this little morsel: “””…That several million people that have watched the fish swim likely includes these researchers, who may very well have made the same observations that you have but they did not write about it because it’s been done before…..but they did not write about it because it’s been done before…”””
It would amaze you, how many times, I have heard that offered as a reason for doing something.
Some examples: Years ago (1966) I happened to be on the scene at the very early (modern) start of the LED age. Designed my very first LED Optical System in 1966, for a small Computer company called IBM. Well actually I was working at Monsanto Central Research labs in St Louis, and IBM was the customer for this device. LEDs then were primarily based on the red GaAsP III-V alloy system. Other more exotic materials like GaN were thought to be possibilities; but somewhat unlikely. Monsanto had many PhD Chemists and Physicists, working on these materials. 40:60 % GaAsP already worked, but making it consistently bright, brought many practical problems. Some of these “Researchers” were not at all interested in working on the practical problems of that system; “It had been done before” as you put it.
They wanted to work on some new intractable material like cubic GaN, get the first published papers that always get cited forever. Didn’t matter to them if what the published subsequently was found to be wrong or worthless; it would be first, and nobody had done it before. Mattered not that Monsanto could not make any profits from their early ramblings. The mundane “it’s been done before” material, in fact became the core of a very successful and early LED product business; ten years before there was any other material technology breakthrough.
Ultimately Shoji Nakamura showed that GaN didn’t like being cubic, and preferred its hexagonal crystal form, and that launched the current Blue-green-white LED lighting revolution. There would have been no money for Nakamura’s research, but for the diligence with which lesser scientists pursued the practical problems of the it’s been done before technology, and got LEDs off the ground.
A boyhood and lifelong friend would have been voted least likely to succeed, in our high school graduating class. Good with his hands, and a piece of wood, he was an academic clutz. He eventually drifted into the field of behavioral psychology, and parlayed his manual skills, into significant advances in the mechanical experimental apparatus, often used in such studies; like making lawyers run mazes to see how they learn; (well there are some things you just can’t get rats to do.). Those things published earned him a scholarship to study in the USA. He and his new American wife, became experts on the learning processes of retarded children; maybe the best in the world.
He often told me stories of research colleagues of his, who had found some niche malady of some newborns, that may have bizarre consequences; but only occurred once in 300,000 live births, or so. They liked working on such oddities, because it had never been done before, so their published papers were cited by others, as the only ones working on that problem. Trouble is, you have to study one hell of a lot of newborns, to find enough one in 300,000s of cases to get any believable statistics.
Maybe traumatic for the families of those few; but really not a major national or world health issue.
My friend and his wife each had their own full professorship, and individual research studies, in the mundane and prevalent problems of premature babies, often born of single or unwed teenage mothers; also the crack babies born to drugged up young mothers.
These problems occur in the tens of thousands, in every city in the USA, not to mention elsewhere. It’s a major public health issue. These “retarded children” become special care individuals for the rest of their lives.
This couple showed that most of these kids, including the crack babies, are simply “retarded”. their mental development was sub-normal at their premature birth. But nothing else was wrong with them. They developed accelerated learning processes that takes these kids from birth to about age three, and bring them right up to mainstream speed, that injects them into the normal education process, with no residual consequence of their behind the pace start; and at a HUGE saving in public health and educational funding cost.
This academic clutz, by not rejecting the mundane “it’s been done before” in favor of the
“nobody else ever did this” mentality has far surpassed in his contribution to society, all the rest of our high school graduating class combined; and there were some stellar performers came ojut of that class.
If more researchers asked, “what good will this do for people on earth” rather than “nobody did this before”, Science would be agreater contributor to mankind than it presently is.