Guest essay by Eric Worrall
James Cook University researchers have discovered if you heat fish above their natural tolerance range while mistreating them (simulating catch and release), a lot of them drop dead.
Rising temperatures may drive fishing-induced selection of low-performance phenotypes
Climate warming is likely to interact with other stressors to challenge the physiological capacities and survival of phenotypes within populations. This may be especially true for the billions of fishes per year that undergo vigorous exercise prior to escaping or being intentionally released from fishing gear. Using adult coral grouper (Plectropomus leopardus), an important fisheries species throughout the Indo-Pacific, we show that population-level survival following vigorous exercise is increasingly compromised as temperatures increase from current-day levels (100–67% survival at 24–30 °C) to those projected for the end of the century (42% survival at 33 °C). Intriguingly, we demonstrate that high-performance individuals take longer to recover to a resting metabolic state and subsequently have lower survival in warm water compared with conspecifics that exercise less vigorously. Moreover, we show that post-exercise mortality of high-performance phenotypes manifests after 3–13 d at the current summer maximum (30 °C), while mortality at 33 °C occurs within 1.8–14.9 h. We propose that wild populations in a warming climate may become skewed towards low-performance phenotypes with ramifications for predator-prey interactions and community dynamics. Our findings highlight the susceptibility of phenotypic diversity to fishing activities and demonstrate a mechanism that may contribute to fishing-induced evolution in the face of ongoing climate change.
Read more: http://www.nature.com/articles/srep40571
I have no doubt overheating already stressed fish causes higher mortality, and fish which “fight” harder (exhibit more stress) are more likely to die. But the inference that this will skew species towards low-performance phenotypes seems absurd.
Even assuming the world does warm as predicted, if tropical waters become too warm for some species, and for whatever reason those species have trouble adapting, they affected species will simply migrate to feeding grounds which are a few hundred miles further away from the equator, until they find their optimum temperature range.
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Most of these liberals believe in open borders, but not for fish 🙂 So how could they swim away?
I love that title! My laugh for day!
For some reason climate change believers think animals can only live in their current zip code and if they are not found there, they’re dead. Moving kills all creatures. Except humans, though I do think one day if a person changes zip codes, they will be called dead and all “ghost” towns will be where humans became “extinct”.
If I normally lived and exercised at a temeprature in the mid-high 20 deg C I would be quite used to it … if I did the same at a temperature of 34deg C with no time to acclimatise I would probably be, to use an English colloquialism, knackered. But give me a few weeks to get used to the 34 deg C and I’d be fine
So how much time did these researchers keep the fish at 34 deg C before putting them through the exercise stress ? I have a nasty feeling that they didn’t bother.
Of course, the best-stressed fish will always be more successful.
I understand if you drop them off a 10 storiey they also do not do well, to prove this I am willing to take the short of ‘research’ funding the authors of these ‘study’ did .
Well the flying fish would survive if there is a swimming pool below.
g
Are these researchers really suggesting that climate change is turning the Theory of Evolution on its head. It is now survival of the weakest?
Bizarrely that is what seems to be happening with scientists in climate science. Maybe that’s where they got the idea.
Are we allowed to debate the Theory of Evolution yet?
‘Survival of the fittest’ is not accurate in that species do not continue to evolve into super beings if not necessary. Rather, it’s the survival of the weakest that the environment allows. Those ‘weakest’ members of the population, that can still survive, continue to pass along their traits in the population.
If the prominent axiom of your theory is known as the “missing link”, you know you’re dealing with “settled science”. Just like the ‘missing link’ that CO2 causes warming. Settled science does not allow for advancements within the theory the way that actual science does.
Homer – it can be dangerous to directly confront their fixed delusion. Proceed with caution.
Surprised this is not front page news.
Climate Change overturns the Theory of Evolution. It is now survival of the weakest. Kind of like how it is with scientists in climate science.
Besides a tendency towards the nonsensical, this study gives data showing that the GBR is being exploited far beyond reason. “1,350 tonnes of coral grouper are caught and retained annually by the commercial sector on the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) alone “….. that’s almost 3 Million pounds of grouper. Worse, “The number of coral grouper caught-and-released annually by the Australian recreational sector is unknown, although it is likely to be at least as high as the estimated commercial fishery discard rates (200,000–600,000 fish per year).”
The bottom line is that if they wish to preserve the Spotted grouper on the GBR, they should ban catch-and-release altogether (they already suspect that catch-and-release results in 80% mortality: “For fishes that undergo vigorous exercise during fisheries capture but are subsequently released ….more than 80% of individuals may ultimately die. “).
The odd thing about the study is that fish capable of very strenuous exercise are the ones that later die in hot water.
A weakness of the study is that it is not about fish that have been bred in warmer water, which should be the standard here, since they are testing a future hypothesis many fish generations in the future.
So we have found that grouper, a lazy fish that swims rapidly only for a few seconds at a time in normal circumstances, if moved to water far above the temperatures it has grown up in, and harassed into swimming full panic speed for three minutes (which would give me a heart attack…) — under these circumstances that represent cruelty to animals — those fish in the hottest water that exercised the hardest, suffered increased mortality.
The same happens with humans, by the way, if forced to excessive panic-driven exercise under conditions far hotter than they are accustomed.
“A weakness of the study is that it is not about fish that have been bred in warmer water, which should be the standard here, since they are testing a future hypothesis many fish generations in the future.”
Good point Kip, I wonder if Eskimos transplanted to the Sahara have a higher rate of heat stroke than the locals?
Better get a grant to study this.
kip ,re your last sentence,3 uk SAS guys died in july 2013 &1 in july 2016 ,from hyperthemia while on test excercise in the brecon beacons
https://www.amazon.com/Anova-Culinary-PCB-120US-K1-Bluetooth-Precision/dp/B00UKPBXM4/ref=sr_1_5?s=kitchen&ie=UTF8&qid=1485204003&sr=1-5&keywords=sous+vide
Perhaps they should try cooking there fish with this sous vide immersion indicator. The specifications say it can control temperature to within 0.01C. They should cook two batches and increase the temperature by 0.01C between batches. See if they can taste any difference. A shame to let all that delicious fish go to waste.
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-3TvrXO8bXTA/T1ZqUMaxj5I/AAAAAAAAFQE/SgvegxaxDPI/s1600/P1040669+mm+(Large).JPG
Is this how they collected their data?
And this is called research – using taxpayer dollars? Time to rename the institution “James Crook University”
beat their skulls against the boat they die too……….
I would like a 5 billion dollar grant to study the impact of type “O” blood type on the global population in the year 2097. “97”
Get it?
And then there’s the Persian/Arabian Gulf. Water temperatures there are quite warm, yet there are fish. There would be lots more of them if they weren’t over-harvested. Oh, and they have living coral reefs there, too!
Ultimately? What kind of time frame are we talking about here?
Because 100% of the pets I had as a child ULTIMATELY died, some just took a decade or two to do so. ~¿~
Summary of climate science biologist, (applies to all living things)
Torture something once; compare results to torturing something twice.
Observe the later has a higher mortality rate.
Conclude Global Warming BS.
I have studied warm water fish for decades, and would need to review some physiology, but I think they do some nit-picking about what causes the problems. The internal particulars seem beside the point along with a too long selective introduction. These papers are so predictable. I guess all the money goes now to studying heat and its bad effects, but their temperatures are hardly very extreme. Real science would study the whole temperature regime, and there seems to be a cold front just past the Bahamas. I may have missed something, but are there proper controls? They note the extensive mortality (amount?) from fishing which I guess is the reason to suggest a phenotypic effect, but there has to be some genetics, among other factors, possible. I just lost access to the paper so I have an excuse to be stupid, but I would not have done it this way. Didn’t they say something about air saturation, presume that means equilibrium, less oxygen with temperature?
On the northern Gulf of Mexico coast non-biological mortality in fishes in general comes mostly from extremes. All these mostly sublethal effects they measured are small relative to cold and predation, human and otherwise. A few shallow water fishes here do have problems when caught in shallow waters with temperatures above 35C. Severe killing freezes have become more rare, none since 1989. I have a photo of a max/min thermometer in December 1983 showing 10C, lots of ice and dead fish around. In 1899 blocks of ice passed New Orleans into the Gulf two days later. Wouldn’t increasing temperatures extend the range of coral and coral critters?
It is interesting that the Ethics Committee allowed harassment instead of more standard respiratory systems to measure stress. They do offer a comment section, but I doubt if it would be useful because this more a generic problem.
Don’t worry, this is from JCU in Queensland where most people believe that day light saving will cause cows milk to go sour, seriously! Australia, the stupid country.
Ah yes, another imaginary “What if” that people actually got paid for.
Research allegedly discovered:
There you go. Ocean waters are going to warm at least 3°C. And NOAA’s stunning joules paper equates to what something like 0.0165°C per decade or so?
From “SCRFA – an international science & conservation NGO”
Not only the top layer of water is going to warm 3°C, but the oceans will do so to a depth of 100 meters?
Imaginary science.
Imaginary problem.
Assumptions regarding temperature.
Assumptions regarding fish.
Assumptions regarding fisherpeople.
Magical warming of surface waters.
Groupers tend to live in, near and around structure, often reefs.
Commercial fisherpeople are unable to trawl grouper up easily. Reefs are unfriendly to most commercial gear.
Existing populations of groupers easily locate to deeper structure when dealing with water quality and temperature changes.
e.g. in the Gulf of Mexico, when seriously cold weather fronts swing through and radically change temperatures colder; most of the filled killed by low temperatures are warm water fish caught in the bayou shallows.
The same fish species in deeper waters are able to locate preferred water temperatures.
Fish counting science is still archaic at best. With groupers, trawling the fish for a count survey just doesn’t work. Groupers’ spawn over the reefs so the fish can’t be counted easily then and completely opposite to what researchers claim, groupers are not easy to sight or count.
The article may well be a precursor to further restrictions on recreational fishing, as if the extensive increases in Marine Parks around Australia, surrendered by Juliar Gillard to the Greens, so that Labor could form a minority government, are not enough.
There is a sufficient number of long words in the article to lead your average politician to believe that the work is scientifically sound.
Hold the front page! Ants die if you focus the sun’s rays through a magnifying glass on them!
See! Anthropogenic Warming Change kills ants!
Oh woe oh woe.
Send money to assuage your guilt if you are a carbon-based life-form.
The ONLY way to check things like that is by checking on young fish being raised for a couple of generations in gradually hotter and hotter environment.
To fry these poor fish who were evolved to lower temps is not science but just cruelty.
“Introduction
Anthropogenic carbon emissions and modified land use have directly contributed to increases in the surface temperature of the planet since the beginning of the industrial revolution1. Aquatic systems have absorbed the majority of the excess heat added to the atmosphere, which has led to a warming of the global sea surface by 0.4 °C in the past century with an additional 0.6–2.0 °C expected by 2100.”
___________________________________________
That’s not science, it’s just empty cabinets and recycle residues before shredding and closing.
“Projected by the end of the century” by a computer model? Once again, pointless meaningless blather. Why this post?