From the ‘Carbon Dioxide, is there anything it can’t destroy?’ department and the University of Adelaide’s department of science fiction, comes this laughable press release. Let’s see, sharks have been around for about 450 million years, and in that time the planet has been significantly warmer than today, and has had far higher CO2 levels than today during that time. Somehow, sharks managed to cope with that. And of course, this isn’t an in situ study of sharks hunting ability, noooo, it’s sharks in a tank with prey thrown in while these clowns jacked around with CO2 levels in the water. Studies in captivity are NOT the same as the ocean. Just ask any salt water aquarium owner how difficult it is to keep specimens healthy under even the best aquarium management practice. Even worse, they only studied one kind of shark, yet extrapolate that to all sharks in the headline of the press release. In my opinion, this study would get laughed out of any grade school science fair, but somehow it gets a pass in peer review.
![FindingNemo65[1]](https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2015/11/findingnemo651.jpg?resize=677%2C363&quality=83)
Sharks’ hunting ability destroyed under climate change
The hunting ability and growth of sharks will be dramatically impacted by increased CO2 levels and warmer oceans expected by the end of the century, a University of Adelaide study has found.
Published today in the journal Scientific Reports, marine ecologists from the University of Adelaide’s Environment Institute report long-term experiments that show warmer waters and ocean acidification will have major detrimental effects on sharks’ ability to meet their energy demands, with the effects likely to cascade through entire ecosystems.
The laboratory experiments, studying Port Jackson sharks and including large tanks with natural habitat and prey, found embryonic development was faster under elevated temperatures. But the combination of warmer water and high CO2 increased the sharks’ energy requirement, reduced metabolic efficiency and removed their ability to locate food through olfaction (smelling). These effects led to marked reductions in growth rates of sharks.
“In warmer water, sharks are hungrier but with increased CO2 they won’t be able to find their food,” says study leader Associate Professor Ivan Nagelkerken, Australian Research Council (ARC) Future Fellow.
“With a reduced ability to hunt, sharks will no longer be able to exert the same top-down control over the marine food webs, which is essential for maintaining healthy ocean ecosystems.”
PhD student Jennifer Pistevos, who carried out the study, says the Port Jackson is a bottom-feeding shark that primarily relies on its ability to smell to find food. Under higher CO2, the sharks took a much longer time to find their food, or didn’t even bother trying, resulting in considerably smaller sharks.
Most research studying the effects of ocean acidification and climate change on fish behaviour has concentrated on small fish prey. Long-term studies on the behaviour and physiology of large, long-lived predators are largely lacking.
Fellow University of Adelaide marine ecologist Professor Sean Connell says the results of the study provide strong support for the call to prevent global overfishing of sharks.
“One-third of shark and ray species are already threatened worldwide because of overfishing,” Professor Connell says. “Climate change and ocean acidification are going to add another layer of stress and accelerate those extinction rates.”
###
UPDATE: As is typical of alarmist science that goes for headlines, they didn’t include a title for the paper, a DOI, or a link to the paper. I’ve dug it up and that information is below.
Ocean acidification and global warming impair shark hunting behaviour and growth
Abstract:
Alterations in predation pressure can have large effects on trophically-structured systems. Modification of predator behaviour via ocean warming has been assessed by laboratory experimentation and metabolic theory. However, the influence of ocean acidification with ocean warming remains largely unexplored for mesopredators, including experimental assessments that incorporate key components of the assemblages in which animals naturally live. We employ a combination of long-term laboratory and mesocosm experiments containing natural prey and habitat to assess how warming and acidification affect the development, growth, and hunting behaviour in sharks. Although embryonic development was faster due to temperature, elevated temperature and CO2 had detrimental effects on sharks by not only increasing energetic demands, but also by decreasing metabolic efficiency and reducing their ability to locate food through olfaction. The combination of these effects led to considerable reductions in growth rates of sharks held in natural mesocosms with elevated CO2, either alone or in combination with higher temperature. Our results suggest a more complex reality for predators, where ocean acidification reduces their ability to effectively hunt and exert strong top-down control over food webs.
The paper is open source here: http://www.nature.com/articles/srep16293
The Supplementary info is here: http://www.nature.com/article-assets/npg/srep/2015/151112/srep16293/extref/srep16293-s1.doc
Update 2: Based on table S2 of the SI, it seems they only tested for 400ppm and 1000ppm, no mention if they somehow increased that gradually [to mimic the natural rate of change over years]. The point is that at our current growth rate of CO2 in the atmosphere at ~2ppm it will take approximately 300 years for our atmosphere to reach that level. Just throwing sharks in a 1000ppm tank (even given a week) isn’t anywhere close to simulating that, and removes all natural evolutionary and adaptation processes from the experiment.
Update 3: I wonder how the media will reconcile the “destroyed” hunting ability of sharks with the claims that global warming caused shark attacks this past summer? Inquiring minds want to know.
Update4: David Hoffer writes in comments about what he found in the paper:
…you have to hunt through to finally find this snippet:
The eggs were left to acclimatize over a period of seven days where temperature was steadily increased by 1 °C to the elevated temperature treatment. The eggs were kept in either control (~400 μatm) or elevated CO2 (~1000 μatm)16,58 crossed with control (~16 °C) or elevated temperature (~19 °C)
So:
They applied a change of +3 deg C over a period of days
The applied a change from 400 uatm CO2 to 1000 uatm CO2 over a period of days
Sure, let’s cram a century of change into one week and see what happens! It gets worse:
In addition, the whole experiment was only 68 days long. 68 days! They extrapolated results by weighing the sharks at 62 days and 68 days. Yes, a whole 6 days!
When they moved the sharks from the small hatching tanks to the larger environment, the elevated temp/co2 sharks were fed DOUBLE the control group for the first little while, and then their feeding was REDUCED for the later part of the experiment to match that of the control group. Why? And how would that affect the results at the end of the experiment?
I can’t even work up the energy to come up with an acerbic sarcastic remark.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Will higher CO2 also make people less aggressive?
The gas could be weaponized!
We need to keep this information from Taiwan otherwise they will really get serious about China’s obsession with sharks fin soup and rip off every fin in sight.
You know, if you want to get published, this is a good approach.
Doing meaningful research is hard. And it might get a dull result – as if you knew the result beforehand it wouldn’t need researching.
But doing laughably bad research guarantees exciting outcomes.
This is market led science.
Well said.
When governments make a market for products they want, unfortunately, taxpayers get what we pay for, in this case dreck, as is usual with climate anti-science.
Seems a few brains are addled in Adelaide.
The clock is ticking on the deadline to get in your crazy creds headlines and articles before Paris. Afterwards they will be in the dead news fatigue zone.
Any move to call for a retraction?
Hint: a five star vote is appropriate, since AW wrote the introduction and pointed out the fact that these sharks are studied in captivity and in a very short time frame. It is bad shark science.
The finest shark coprolite specimen I ever found was in Illinois. I’ll bet they don’t make them like they used to.
The paper is a product of the University of Adelaide Environment Institute lead amongst others by Professor Corey Bradshaw (bottom) …
http://quadrant.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/corey-bradshaw.jpg
… who was one of the most vociferous critics of Bjorn Lomborg getting a gig at the University of Western Australia because his academic record was inadequate.
Whenever I see a man(?) with ring type earrings or anyone (anything?) with a nose ring, I get this terrible urge to snap on a dog leash and start yanking.
All the best pirates wore ring ear rings. I like the African rings around the neck, neck stretching rings myself. Specially when made out of copper or gold.
g
Good thing I’m reading this at night before going to sleep, and not in the morning with a mouthful of coffee.
I know this “research” is bad but it’s actually quite impressive for a frog.
And now you know why we have had a glut of totally unneeded second-rate PhDs.
The glut of PhDs is definitely a problem.
Reminds me a little of the implosion of the 70s when many professionals had to drive cabs.
Because the natural increase in CO2 will continue even if we halted all human-generated CO2 sharks will face this fate anyway and nothing can prevent it. Nature is not partial to living things – get over it. The chemistry of the ocean is a complete accident and always has been. It changes constantly and is entirely inconsistent regionally. But no matter where you find an ocean or a salt sea or a lake or a hot spring or a subglacial pond you will find life. Life has been dealing with Nature’s chaos for a very long time and there is no evidence that once it started, Earth was ever again without living things. The living things of our time are in no way special or immune to Nature’s moods.
I fail to see any way that this study says anything about overfishing of sharks! To jump to that from this study is a break in logic.
Well since it is protected species, then any messing with it would count as overfishing.
g
Exactly! As one who has briefly studied shark attacks, I am an expert on shark olfactory gases. Unfortunately, marine ecology is full of such papers, usually blaming a human cause without connection. These can be found at all levels and journals, even some written by the well trained and experienced.
I suck at trivia but since I’ve had my run ins with the mighty sea dwellers, I learned about this awhile back.
Useless information but I felt smart for about a 5 seconds.
http://www.csmonitor.com/Technology/Tech-Culture/2012/0815/Julia-Child-s-first-recipe-shark-repellent
And, I just realized that the CO2 was raised very rapidly on these sharks. In the natural world such CO2 concentrations would take many years to achieve and allow lots of time for any needed adaptation.
Can the Australian Society for the Protection of Animals be alerted to this egregious instance of blatant shark abuse?
Prevention of Cruelty to Animals is what I meant, as the American Society is called, ie the ASPCA.
Here in Australia it would the RSPCA, Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
I read the paper, the SI (basically the ANOVAs), and several descriptions of this unusual shark species before commenting. The paper is dubious at best.
The water comparisons were 16C (natural today) and 19C. The CO2 comparisons were 400ppm (natural today) and 1000ppm; sufficient to lower the lab tank seawater to below 7.7 (in the SI), which is completely unrealistic because unbuffered. (Correctly calculated including buffering, 800ppm CO2 (2x) will result in pH above 7.9 from 8.1 today (delta negative 0.15-0.18). Essay Shell Games provides the references.
But more interesting is the experiment’s Port Jackson shark. They tested impact on egg hatching, feeding, and growth. Unsurprisingly, warmer water accelerated hatching while CO2 had no effect. The ‘babies’ are about 25cm when hatched. The maximum experimental observation time was 68 days. Lab lab food intake was statistically fine, but growth was below statistically ‘normal’. These sharks grow to about 1.65 meters, and become sexually mature at about 10 years old. So the study says little about how these hatchlings might do over the ten years they grow to maturity in those extreme conditions.
These sharks feed on sea urchins, clams, and mussels. This is proven by their very unusual jaw/teeth structures, and their first stomach. (It can be pushed inside out into the mouth to ‘spit out’ the unwanted shell pieces after the soft food parts are partly digested and moved on). For convenience, the experimental food was previously frozen shrimp! Nothing to do with growth?
These sharks feed almost exclusively at night; they are inactive during daytime, usually ‘hiding’ in rocky places or caves. For convenience, all the feeding was done during the day, including the ‘hunting by smell’ experiments! Hunting for shrimp in daytime nothing to do with the time it takes?
So by using an unnatural food at an unnatural feeding time, the baby sharks were statistically shown to not grow as fast and be sensorily challenged under extreme conditions. Makes common sense. The paper does not.
Wow! I used to teach graduate research methods and designs. I’d give students their over-the-weekend assignment of a particularly flawed piece that we would beat up in class on Monday. Bad research is not the exclusive domain of whatever this field is.
Thank you for saving me from this one. Comments above have folks nearly fainting and requiring liquid sustenance (with a bit of a kick).
You are welcome. At least I learned about a very unusual shark. Best writeup was Melbourne Aquariums.
Why did the referees of the article, presumably zoologists themselves, not pick up on the points that seem obvious now that you have highlighted them for those of us who are not biologists.
Perhaps because it would not have gotten published. That would have scotched the alarmist PR just before Paris. Cannot have that!
MW, you point out another peer review failure here. Perhaps no ocean biologists were reviewers? For other egregious examples, see my essays By Land or by Sea, Shell Games, and Burning NonScience in my newest ebook. For how IPCC fails to do minimal scientific due diligence, see essay No Bodies.
Bottom feeding sharks, huh.
They should be encouraged to repeat the experiment with Great Whites, Hammerheads, or Reefs. If the sloppiness of their methodology were to carry over to their animal handling, we would see them feeding the sharks and losing fingers at the same time.
TonyL November 12, 2015 at 12:33 pm
Bottom feeding sharks, huh.
VS bottom feeding climate researchers?
(couldn’t resist) :- )
michael
keeping sharks on aquariums-
“Complicating matters, sharks are notorious for spitting out their vitamins and for being “picky eaters.” Therefore, much shark husbandry and care must be focused on meeting the dietary needs of the fish”
in
the sad part is they believe in this fraud and they are taking grants which should be going to much needed research into polution of air, water ,and land
So…..how did sharks hunt when atmospheric CO2 was ten times higher than today?
“I can’t even work up the energy to come up with an acerbic sarcastic remark.”
CO2 reduces capacity for internet flaming!
Oh, wait, maybe that would be a good thing.
CO2 reduces free speech!
Federal funding for crap science is WAY out of control! Wait, let me restate that. Federal funding is WAY out of control! How the freedom loving people of the USA ever let their guberment get so out of control is beyond me. We don’t have to take it. Get out there and vote the dam idiot dems out. Make sure everyone you know is on board. What those idiots are doing to this country is a crisis! The globe is on course to become the Soviet UN. The longer this goes on the harder it will be to eventually overcome.
In Australia, the sharks have certainly not been thrown off their game, as in recent months, the number of surfers and swimmers off the coast have suffered weekly attacks by sharks. This is an elevated rate of attack. People are ordering new shark nets for swimming beaches at large cost. Sharks like Warmistas are out of control.
Well if you had Kodiak brown bears in Australia, then you could pitch a tent in the middle of their travel path, and then wait for them to come and eat you, so you could be the first to study brown bears from the inside.
Might work with sharks too since you don’t have brown bears; well it would work with salties too, I guess.
g
They couldn’t smell their prey due to the CO2 in the water, or due to the fact that the “scientists” (and I use the term losely when relating to this paper) kept messing with their tank?
They got a setup that every marine biology undergrad dreams of, huge research areas with the ability to conduct long term research on shraks, and they put out this?
This is equivalent to sending a rocket to the moon just to shoot a Reebok ad.
CO2 doesn’t have ANY smell.
Yes it does- it smells like money!
Just ask any salt water aquarium owner how difficult it is to keep specimens healthy under even the best aquarium management practice.
Salt is pure murder. You have to baby and cosset them continually, and even then, you can screw up.
I stuck with fresh. I had quite a few at one point (including a couple of catfish who lived as long as cats). I got a full ammonia-nitrite-nitrate progressions going nicely. (The secret is a thin coat of floss under the gravel using an undergravel filter. The more intense surface area of the floss is a superb medium for desirable bacteria, and the floss will always remain white as a whistle.)
But salt is a major life project if you are going to do it right.
For every educated person it must be quite obvious what Antony wrote above:
“Let’s see, sharks have been around for about 450 million years, and in that time the planet has been significantly warmer than today, and has had far higher CO2 levels than today during that time. Somehow, sharks managed to cope with that.”
Thus, it is unthinkable that any scientific trained person can overlook this simple but irrefutable logic. Consequently we must realize that “scientists” who produce stories like “Evil CO2 will reduce sharks” do deliberately dream up fables in order to produce more propaganda headlines for COP21 in Paris…
Even science journalists of BBC – once a trademark of journalistic honesty – belong to these unfaithful manipulators of the public opinion today, as this similar stupid and related radio report from August 2015 proves:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02yxbtw
(from “Science in Action: Lessons from Katrina”, listen after 14:40 runtime)
Of course, such “noble cause corruption” cheaters have no bad conscience at all because they believe “The end justifies the means”.
I wonder how they will think about their actions, when – in maybe 20 years – it will be clear that they didn’t fight for the good but against life itself, since a sufficient CO2 supply is the very foundation of Life on Earth.
Tramp, I’ve seen doctors fall for the “vaccines are worthless” meme, despite the obvious lack of smallpox and polio victims in their wards. Never underestimate the capacity of the self-deluded.
They made the mistake of actually publishing their procedures. Don’t they know they need to keep it secret from those of us who only “want to prove them wrong?”