Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Researchers testing the effects of global warming on a 2000 litre fish tank have warned that the world faces a major collapse of coastal fisheries, because some of their fish died.
Climate change could drive coastal food webs to collapse
Authors
Professor, Marine Biology, University of Adelaide
Professor, Ecology, University of Adelaide
University of Adelaide
May 1, 2017 6.01am AEST
Coastal marine food webs could be in danger of collapse as a result of rising carbon dioxide levels, according to our new research. The study shows that although species such as algae will receive a boost, the positive effects are likely to be cancelled out by the increased stress to species further up the food chain such as predatory fish.
…
Test tank
We used a self-contained ecosystem in a 2,000-litre tank to study the effects of warming and ocean acidification on a coastal food web. This approach can give us a good idea of what might happen to genuine coastal food webs, because the tank (called a “mesocosm”) contains natural habitats and a range of species that interact with one another, just as they do in the wild.
Our food web had three levels: primary producers (algae), herbivores (invertebrates), and predators (fish).
The results show that carbon dioxide enrichment can actually boost food webs from the bottom up through increased algal growth. This benefited herbivores because of the higher abundance of food, and in turn boosted the very top of the food web, where fish grew faster.
But while this effect of ocean acidification may be seen as positive for marine ecosystems, it mainly benefits “weedy” species – a definition that can be applied to some species of algae, invertebrates, and even fish.
In contrast, habitat-forming species such as kelp forests and coral reefs are more likely to disappear with rising CO₂ emissions, and with them many associated species that are deprived of their habitats and food.
Detrimental effect
Our results therefore showed that warming had a detrimental overall effect on the coastal food web we studied. Although higher temperatures boosted algal growth, herbivorous populations did not expand. Because herbivore abundances remained similar and elevated temperatures result in a higher metabolic demand, predatory fish consumed more herbivorous prey, resulting in a collapse of these prey populations.
…
Read more: http://theconversation.com/climate-change-could-drive-coastal-food-webs-to-collapse-76798
The abstract of the study;
Boosted food web productivity through ocean acidification collapses under warming
Authors
Silvan U. Goldenberg,
Ivan Nagelkerken,
Camilo M. Ferreira,
Hadayet Ullah,
Sean D. Connell
First published: 27 April 2017
Future climate is forecast to drive bottom-up (resource driven) and top-down (consumer driven) change to food web dynamics and community structure. Yet, our predictive understanding of these changes is hampered by an over-reliance on simplified laboratory systems centred on single trophic levels. Using a large mesocosm experiment, we reveal how future ocean acidification and warming modify trophic linkages across a three-level food web: that is, primary (algae), secondary (herbivorous invertebrates) and tertiary (predatory fish) producers. Both elevated CO2 and elevated temperature boosted primary production. Under elevated CO2, the enhanced bottom-up forcing propagated through all trophic levels. Elevated temperature, however, negated the benefits of elevated CO2 by stalling secondary production. This imbalance caused secondary producer populations to decline as elevated temperature drove predators to consume their prey more rapidly in the face of higher metabolic demand. Our findings demonstrate how anthropogenic CO2 can function as a resource that boosts productivity throughout food webs, and how warming can reverse this effect by acting as a stressor to trophic interactions. Understanding the shifting balance between the propagation of resource enrichment and its consumption across trophic levels provides a predictive understanding of future dynamics of stability and collapse in food webs and fisheries production.
Read more (paywalled): http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gcb.13699/abstract
Note: the link to the study does not work in some web browsers, I had to view it using Google Chrome
Unfortunately the full study is paywalled, but attempting to infer global consequences of increased CO2 from a toy eco-system in a 2000 litre fish tank is absurd.
On the positive side, the researchers performed an actual experiment, rather than just running a computer model.
But anyone who has ever kept fish knows how difficult it can be to keep a fish tank eco-system stable. Fish in a tank are subject to numerous stresses, even a small mistake with feeding, water contamination or filtering waste can lead to disease and death.
If the researchers had instead studied regions of the ocean with elevated CO2 levels, they would have discovered plenty of places in the ocean where CO2 levels are naturally elevated well beyond anything anthropogenic CO2 will achieve, due to natural outgassing from volcanic sources.
Many of these reefs are ridiculously healthy, despite corals and fish growing in water which is continuously totally saturated with CO2.
The existence of healthy natural reefs with populations of fish growing in regions of the ocean which are full of CO2, strongly suggests whatever killed the fish in that 2000 litre research tank had nothing to do with CO2.
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I run an Aquaponics system based around a 1000L tank. If their fish started eating more it’s a pretty good bet the Ammonia and Nitrite levels increased markedly.
In an AP system this is dealt with by bacteria and plants. In a closed lab system you’d need constant monitoring and adjustments to keep the levels where the fish can tolerate them.
Somehow I can’t imagine priests of AGW actually opting for a ‘dirty’ natural system like AP. 😀
Oh… when I say ‘based around’ there is also a 1000L sump tank and 2 x 250L growbeds with media and plants.
Freshie or salt? Marine is a little different.
“I run an Aquaponics system based around a 1000L tank. If their fish started eating more it’s a pretty good bet the Ammonia and Nitrite levels increased markedly.”
Yes, that’s a great point. More food = more growth = more excrement. If you can’t deal with the extra excrement… boom. The sea volume is huge, not nearly as touchy, and natural solutions will tend to come into play… more growth of things that use those things themselves.
Yeah you have to excommunicate the excrement.
Funny thing is the ITER project has the same shitty problem.
G
Obviously, use warm water and plenty of CO2 plant food if you want algae to thrive. A small tank helps.
I don’t believe anyone has managed to grow commercial algae crops in the open sea. Nature doesn’t seem to want to co-operate.
Maybe that’s the reason the icthyosaurs became extinct – and a fine thing it was, if you were icthyosaur prey. Wouldn’t it be fun, if the climate change funding machinery ground to a halt! Would anyone care if climatologists became as irrelevant as phrenologists?
Cheers.
Mike asks: “I don’t believe anyone has managed to grow commercial algae crops in the open sea.”
Check U.S. Aquaculture, now the “Monterey Abalone Company”. They were public a few years ago and I think it’s the same company. I almost bought in as a founder in 1998.
Anyway, they grow kelp and abalone. They’ve been a going concern for quite awhile but their market seems to be Asia so they don’t get much US press.
Well, they grow abalone.
They harvest naturally-occurring kelp. That’s not the same as growing it as a crop.
Well NZ green shelled muscles grow in the open Ocean; well in Cook Straight anyway.
But they are not supposed to be algae, but the ones I had for lunch yesterday, did have some sort of vegetation growing on the shells.
G
Well L.C. Smith did not become extinct, and it lives in oceans that are quite warm with plenty of CO2.
G
You guys laugh, but for a week or so in the 1960s Ehrlich forgot to feed his bunny and Stanford still hasn’t recovered.
ROFL 🙂
Speaking of Ehrlichs and bunnies:
http://www.gla.ac.uk/media/media_463309_en.pdf
The 20th century American Paul Ehrlich was a prof of mine at Stanford, 1969-72. Even then, students laughed at him as a Marxist prophet of doom.
“We used a self-contained ecosystem” STOP!……..Stop….stop…stop, right there. What the flippin’ heck is a self contained ecosystem but an imaginary, sophomoric, fantasy concocted by a poorly trained student. Captured marine animals in a glass box is the equivalent of putting a mouse in a bell jar and watching it smother and claiming insight into the natural world. It is an insight only in that applying unnatural conditions generate unnatural results. Aquariums screw up all the time simply because they are, well, unnatural. Bizarre!
A much more likely explanation for the UME’s and food chain collapse in the Pacific
https://nukeprofessional.blogspot.com/2016/02/a-scientific-basis-for-destruction-of.html
The link will take you to a junk radiation site. I don’t recommend clicking on it. As a Health Physicist, I had a good laugh at the site – in between sobbing knowing that there are people that believe this garbage.
i see, so someone who profits from radiation encourages people not to look at clear scientific information.
I love it how you declare that anyone who knows what they are talking about you are being paid to disagree with you.
Then again, it’s not like you’ve ever come up with a valid argument or actual facts.
That just isn’t your style.
Instead it’s screaming that radiation is going to kill us all. Even when the increase is so small that it’s only measurable on the most sensitive of instruments.
That granite pen holder on your desk is giving you more radiation than Fukushima is.
There is no food chain collapse in the Pacific.
And no the whales are not dying off.
You again? At least Monty Python could have the option for an actual argument, and not simply a vacuous contradiction.
Some things are so incredibly stupid that they are self refuting.
For a good example, check out the nearest mirror.
There is no poisonous ocean and the whales are not dying.
Why don’t you peddle your p@ranoid lies somewhere, where the inhabitants are as stupid as you are.
Perhaps you can find some acolytes there.
Idiot, read here
https://nukeprofessional.blogspot.com/2017/04/island-breath-exposing-death-of-pacific.html
Idiot read here too
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-reese-halter/dying-whales-horrific-ome_b_9006332.html
Humpbacks missing
https://nukeprofessional.blogspot.com/2017/01/humpback-whales-in-hawaii-missing-in.html
https://nukeprofessional.blogspot.com/2016/03/over-50-of-hawaiis-whales-are-dead-or.html
http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/pr/health/mmume/2017humpbackatlanticume.html
The oceans are being decimated, and we get “MarkW” what a tool
https://alaskafisheries.noaa.gov/node/30342
Stock
Your alarmism is a kind of bizarre necrophilia. Looking at life you see only death. The humpbacks need no help – you do.
Wow, you really do revel in propaganda don’t you.
Not a factual statement in any of the links provided, just breathless p@ranoia disguised as brainless propaganda.
You really are convinced that radiation is going to kill us all, yet you know nothing about it.
The fact is that the world is awash in radiation, always has been, always will be.
You will get hundreds of times a greater increase in radiation moving from Miami to Denver than you would get by moving to Fukushima.
There was no massive release of radiation from Fukushima.
stock, I know that you are so scared that you can’t read straight, but your whale death site talks about a small increase in whale deaths in the ATLANTIC.
Even someone as ignorant as yourself can’t blame that on Fukushima.
Ohhhh, 14 whales in 2 years.
From what you had claimed earlier, I thought the Pacific was supposed to be devoid of whales by now?
Heck, Japan harvests several times that number every year.
Even the NOAA doesn’t declare what the cause is, yet you are 100% convinced that it is caused by radiation.
Sheesh, why don’t you just check yourself into the nearest day care center. The nice ladies that work there will give you milk and cookies and put you down for your afternoon nap.
PT, I guess you understood the story when the Pedophilia gate was gaining traction, and then the Pope came out with “focusing on bad news, even if true, was like eating shit”.
What is tells me is that when the true sociopaths/pedophiles at the top (likely to include the Pope) are about to be fully exposed….they bring out the top gun to sway the true believers to shut there eyes and minds. Even if its true.
So it was interesting that you picked up on the “eating shit” meme. Pope is also promoting a huge wealth transfer via fighting carbon. He is captured, they probably got him on video with some boys.
That’s it, better out than in, stock. You’ll feel better if you confess it all. You’re in safe company here.
Notice how the troll tries to change the subject when it knows that it has lost.
Instead of actually defending its nonsense, it declares that anyone who disagrees with it is like those who ignored the charges of pedophilia that were leveled at the Catholic church.
Just admit that you were wrong and quit embarrassing yourself.
MarkW focuses on one article on the Atlantic, 42 whale deaths, declared a UME by NOAA and then he presents it as 14 whales, and then pretends it was the only evidence submitted.
A simple google search will clear up the massive whale deaths in the Pacific and now for some reason the Atlantic.
BTW I participated in the NOAA whale counts in Hawaii. I am not blowing smoke.
Two cubic metre tank would fit ~ under a pingpong table. Not adequate spatial access for fish. You can’t uniformly heat a habitat and get any indication of problems in the wild. In the ocean, the fish could seek different depths to cooler water, breezes push currents and cool areas, clouds… One main failure would arise by not providing adequate non organic resources. CaO is a major oxide in ubiquitous basaltic ocean basin formations. It’s solubility is comparatively low but rises with pH and is everywhere in sufficient abundance for invertebrates (contrary to alarmatrophic literature). This adds another buffer reaction along with the well known carbonic acid/carbonate resistance to pH change. The heating would also evolve CO2 from the water
WUWT had an exellent article written by an ocean ecology researcher who stated that nearly all lab experiments done on ocean habitat are worthless. He gave a list of requirements for proper testing protocols.
I’m only a geologist/mining engineer, metallurgist but this has earmarks of failure for a layman critic. First, to their obvious surprise they carbonated and heated the water and got great response from algae and invertebrate algal eaters, but the fish went gangbusters and ate up too much of the invertebrates and some of them died. This is a great positive result in an experiment most likely to fail because of scale, suitability, ratios of resources and the physical modelling problem. The reason you don’t make a model airplane with metal is you are stuck with air as the medium it has to fly in and slower speeds – it can’t be scaled. You have to alter the materials to make up for this shortcoming. Similarly, you can’t scale the fish down to fit. They probably axed the unexpectedly good result by bogging CO2 and heat at rates and levels the creatures couldnt handle in a little box. This may have been an execution of the poor little fellas.
It’s curious that the articles cited in the post indicated that increased CO2 concentrations were a net positive, but that this was more than canceled by the detrimental effects of warming. But I couldn’t find anything indicating how high they had to increase the temperature to get those negative effects. Given that the IPCC projected surface air temperature rise is between 1.5-4.5C, and that both the thermal capacity and density of seawater is so much higher than air, I find it hard to believe that they could have generated measurable effects with the kinds of realistically small ocean temperature increases that we would see over the next 500 years even if all the IPCC fantasies of warming came true,
That wasn’t quite what happened. Apparently, they had better results if they increased CO2, and they also had better results if they increased temperatures. It was only when they increased CO2 AND temperature that they had problems – and the result there was so wide-ranging that it was probably something else in the tank that injured the fish.
The real cause of the fish deaths was probably the blackout stopping the filters…..
Exactly … oxygen depletion in a hurry + spike in hydrogen sulphide overdose.
One small coment: There are no weeds or weed species in nature. Weed ( the no non-smoking kind ) is a human concept and nature couldn’t care less about what grows and what doesn’t.
True. A weed is a plant out of place, as determined by humans.
There are “weedy” species though, that are adapted to quickly exploiting disturbed habitats, e. g. after fires or earthslides. They typically breed fast and have short life-cycles. Such species are preadapted to succesfully colonize e. g. your driveway or rose-garden, so they get labelled as “weeds”.
In addition to all of the other problems with this experiment is the fact that it was carried out in a very short time span, which immediately invalidates its claims about environmental events and processes that take decades to occur and, among other things, thereby ignores any evolutionary responses of fish species to increases in CO2. The experiment therefore has managed to violate both time and space.
You could not make this stuff up.
It could only happen in South Australia, failed Albania-type state of the south!
So their experiment was a total failure in that they found the obvious, CO2 is beneficial and “acidification’ is merely an easing of a mildly alkaline environment and really has no effect on sea life as long as it is even marginally such. Basically known for 150 years.
This is beyond belief. For a study of an oceanic ecosystem, 2000L isn’t significantly different from 20 gallons. Truly, “A little learning is a dangerous thing.” Where is PETA? Where is SINA?
Well down in Zealandia we really know about fish tanks and life sized echosystems. Our Aussie Mates are welcome to come on by and try there experiment again over here.
G
To successfully simulate an ecosystem it is very important to have a number of top predators in it. Somehow I can’t see a viable shark population living in a 2,000 litre tank.
Another complication is that many organisms are mobile, if density of a species becomes too high in a specific locality, some of them routinely move away. Not easy to do in a tank.
Also small population are very vulnerable to extinction through purely stochastic variations. As a matter of fact I would expect a 2000 liter “marine ecosystem” to collapse in short order.
There are (fairly) stable ecosystems even in very small ponds, but they most certainly don’t include multiple trophic level fish populations.
2000 liters can be held in a 4 foot 1 inch cube.
Its an effing hot tub, for gods sake.
sharks?
Hey a Helgramite is a good enough replica of a shark for a 2,000 liter tank. Good thing they don’t grow to six feet or even two meters.
G
elevated temperatures result in a higher metabolic demand,
–>
elevated temperatures allow higher metabolic performance
predatory fish consum more herbivorous prey, resulting in / a collapse of these prey populations./ –> higher numbers of populations of all kind:
other this studies are failed due to Systematik errors.
“Many of these reefs are ridiculously healthy, despite corals and fish growing in water which is continuously totally saturated with CO2.”
Aye, that be true! My 2,000L coral display tank runs with pH at 7.8 – 8.1… CO2 is high constantly despite +A1 fresh air circulation and climate control air-conditioning. The magic triangle for a reef display is water movement | water chemistry | water quality … the answer lies inside the triangle!
There’s one thing I know about flunky academics such as these, they have no experience in sustaining the ecosystems they talk of for long periods of time … how can they otherwise possibly know anything? If they did, I’d have heard about them in Australia.
Who’s done the gold fish in the bowl? What’s next? Who ate my homework?
Maybe they should try removing CO2 from the water and see what happens…
I would be more interested to know what is the minimum size area that marine species can live without needing outside help.
Whatever that was then i would then try to create that as a testing area.
The fact is you cannot create hurricanes that replenish coral reefs by churning the seabed and all the other myriad ways nature works in the sea.
The marine life in the experiment were severely stressed from the start. Probably on a death spiral when they hit the 2000 litre tank.
a little more than 400 gallons….go take a look at some lobster or fish tanks in a retail food store, thats the scale of these guys’ ecosystem….
These are scientists. They had twenty 2000L tanks and 20 control tanks. Not only that, they repeated the tests at 20 different CO2 concentrations. One of their fellow Climate Scare troughers Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg has participated in a significant well constructed experiment in vivo, utilizing coral atolls. This study ENCORE found high levels of nutrients did not kill the reef. What to do with these results when scientist are being funded to kick farmers?
So best to do one tank, make a statement and not have the difficulty of having to bury an inconvenient result with any claim of significance.
why didn’t they just visit here?
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/12/28/the-fishes-and-the-coral-live-happily-in-the-co2-bubble-plume/
Hey it’s a scale model; just like the real thing pretty much.
g
How about studying the devastation that’s likely to affect the reef and fish etc. as a result of the creeping tide of poisonous ocean heading our way from nuclear plant that blew up in Japan in 2011. It’s already killing everything in its path. Maybe it’s less alarmist and convenient to attribute destruction of the reef to climate change. That way it also keeps researchers funded to do dumb and irrevalent studies thereby allowing the rest us to remain in blissful ignorance as to other reasons for why the reef and fish may be dying?
[??? .mod]
You really need to calm down and get a grip.
First off, traces of radiation from Fukushima reached the west coast of N. America years ago. If there was a creeping tide of poisonous ocean, it would have reached here long ago.
Beyond that, there is not and never was a creeping tide of posisonous ocean.
There is no die off of fish or reef.
Moderator, are CB and stock the same guy, they both seem to push the same way, way, way off the wall garbage about radiation.
Oh, god. I just realised that this “research” was done at the University of Adelaide. I’m going to have to send my degree back.
Aus budgets coming up, tonight i think?
and UNI funding is being cut i gather
reading dross like this..I am bloody glad they ARE planning to cut wasting taxpapyers money.
weird with majority high fee paying O/S students in almost every aussie uni nowdays(spot the aussie) how they keep grabbing ever more govvy grants n handouts?
education might be costing more..but the results of that costly ed seems to be pretty poor to “what a waste of time” you shoulda been a brickie end results;-)
big fish ate the lil fishies , golly gosh it was the co2 dunnit..
ffs! fail em all
CO2 improved olfactory sensitivity of all species, (favoring predators because prey had nowhere to hide).
Where is hide in a 2000 liter tank. I would suggest that the pray fish’s hide is in jeopardy.
g
[Those who get eaten always pray. .mod]
An atheist swimming in the ocean, when he see’s a shark in the water, so he starts swimming towards his boat. As he looks back he sees the shark turn and head towards him. His boat is a ways off and he starts swimming like crazy. He’s scared to death, and as he turns to see the jaws of the great white beast open revealing its teeth in a horrific splendor, the atheist screams, “Oh God! Save me!”
In an instant time is frozen and a bright light shines down from above. The man is motionless in the water when he hears the voice of God say, “You are an atheist. Why do you call upon me when you do not believe in me?”
Aghast with confusion and knowing he can’t lie the man replies, “Well, that’s true I don’t believe in YOU, but how about the shark? Can you make the shark believe in you?”
The Lord replies, “As you wish,” and the light is retracted back into the heavens and the man could feel the water begin to move once again. As the atheist looks back he can see the jaws of the shark start to close down on him, when all of sudden the shark stops and pulls back.
Shocked, the man looks at the shark as the huge beast closes its eyes, bows its head and says, “Thank you Lord for this food for which I am about to receive…”