Coping with climate stress in Antarctica
Some polar fish can cope with warming or ocean acidification, but not both together
Some Antarctic fish living in the planet’s coldest waters are able to cope with the stress of rising carbon dioxide levels the ocean. They can even tolerate slightly warmer waters. But they can’t deal with both stressors at the same time, according to a study from the University of California, Davis.
The study, published recently in the journal Global Change Biology, of emerald rockcod is the first to show that Antarctic fishes may make tradeoffs in their physiology and behavior to cope with ocean acidification and warming waters.
(The research is described in a web feature, “The Last Stop,” at the UC Davis Science & Climate website.)
“In dealing with climate stress, these fish are really bad multi-taskers,” said senior author Anne Todgham, an associate professor with the UC Davis Department of Animal Science. “They seem quite capable of coping with increases in CO2, and they can compensate for some warming. But they can’t deal with both stressors at the same time. That’s a problem because those things happen together–you don’t get CO2 dissolving in the ocean independent of warming.”
TRADEOFFS
Antarctic fishes live in water that is typically about -1.9C (28.6F). At their field site in Antarctica, the authors exposed emerald rockcod to two temperatures: -1 degree Celsius (30F) and 2 degrees Celsius (36F). The latter is the threshold for global warming that the Paris Agreement targets to prevent the most catastrophic impacts of climate change. They also exposed the fish to treatments of three different levels of CO2 ranging from ambient to elevated projected levels.
Increased CO2 levels by themselves had little impact on the fish. After a couple of weeks, heart, ventilation and metabolic rates increased with warming. Their behavior also changed with warming. The fish swam less and preferred dark zones, which suggests they were attempting to conserve energy. Then after 28 days, juvenile rockcod were able to compensate for the warming temperatures. However, this temperature compensation only happened in the absence of rising CO2.
NO COLDER PLACES TO GO
While some species are beginning to shift to cooler places to escape warming habitats, polar fish have no colder places to go. They have to cope by using their existing physiology, which the study shows is limited.
Emerald rockcod help form the basis of the Antarctic food web, supporting an ecosystem of species such as Emperor penguins and seals.
“The Antarctic has contributed very little to the production of greenhouse gases, and yet it’s one of the places on the planet receiving the most impact,” Todgham said. “I feel we have responsibility to care about the spaces that are so fragile. If we can provide reservoirs of areas that are less stressful to plants and animals through protecting natural places, we can buy ourselves some time to deal with things like climate change that will take a long time to get in line.”
###
The study’s authors include lead author and Ph.D student Brittany Davis, Erin Flynn and Nann Fangue of UC Davis, Frederick Nelson of UC Davis and Howard University; and Nathan Miller from San Francisco State University.
The study was funded through grants from the Division of Polar Programs, National Science Foundation, and University of California Agricultural Experiment Station.
Added: Here is the paper: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gcb.13987/full
The above is the press release from Eurekalert, which conveniently left out this passage from the “feature” at UCDavis:
Back at the research station, Todgham and her team place the eggs and juveniles in plastic buckets with water that is 2 degrees Celsius, a temperature scientists predict will be the norm in 80 years. Researchers pump in various levels of CO2 via colorful tubes that snake in and out of each bucket.
For several weeks, Todgham measures how the fish cope. She looks at gene expression, the cellular stress response, metabolic changes and physiological factors like activity level and growth rates.
“We’re trying to predict how each species will cope with warmer water and higher CO2 emissions,” Todgham said.
The short answer: not well.
As anyone who has ever owned a saltwater aquarium and tried to keep it alive without crashing can tell you, a tank, let alone a plastic bucket, is a far cry from the actual ocean.
Of course these sci-fi kids don’t seem to understand that switching the environment from the sea to a plastic bucket is a stressor in and of itself. Further, the speed at which the water temperature change is induced on these hapless creatures removes any possibility of a long term natural adaptations. Let’s reduce 80+ years of predicted climate change induced ocean temperature and posited pH change to a few days in a bucket, without accounting for that change of environment, yeah, that’s the ticket.
I mean seriously, this is peer-reviewed science? This isn’t even at the junior science fair level.
Then there’s this:
Polar fish have nowhere colder to go, but so far, it looks like other species have not migrated in to their ecosystem. Antarctica is ringed by a circumpolar current that acts like a barrier, so it would not be easy for aquatic creatures to migrate in.
“Except for the crabs,” Todgham says. “It looks like they can enter by marching along the bottom.”
Gosh, a current is a “barrier” to fish? They can’t swim in water with a current? According to Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, the speed of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current is pretty low:
It is a very cold current with temperatures ranging from –1 to 5°C depending on the time of the year, and with speeds up to 2 knots (2.3 miles per hour or 3.7 km per hour). This is the same speed as a brisk walk. Antarctica is also the birthplace of deep ocean waters that make up part of the global Ocean Conveyor.
It’s more likely that fish at warmer southern hemisphere latitudes don’t like the subfreezing water near Antarctica and aren’t equipped with the cellular antifreeze to deal with it. So, they don’t go there.
The stupid, it burns.
You think that’s bad, watch the video they produced which due to the number of smiling headshots and irrelevant imagery of seals and penguins looks more like “my grant sponsored summer vacation in Antarctica“.
UPDATE: This is a curious development, within 30 minutes of publication of this critique, it seems the press release has disappeared. (h/t to David Middleton)
This was the original link: https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-01/uoc%E2%80%93cwc011618.php
That link now gives:
Page not found.
The page you are looking for has moved. Please go to the main EurekAlert! homepage to locate the section you are interested in and reset your bookmarks.
For further assistance, please contact webmaster@eurekalert.org.
I still had my browser window open showing it in the daily feed, you can see it right at the top in this screencap:
That’s gone missing from Eurekalert too:
https://www.eurekalert.org/bysubject/atmospheric.php
The feature at UCDavis still exists though:
http://climatechange.ucdavis.edu/news/theres-nowhere-colder-go/
And you can still see the press release in Google cache:
UPDATE2: I received this reply from the UC davis Press office (email redacted to prevent spamming):
Andy Fell <ahfell@xxxxxx.xxx>
To
CC
Hi Anthony,
For logistical reasons we are issuing the news release tomorrow. I think it may have inadvertently appeared briefly on Eurekalert, but it should be up there tomorrow.
The original paper can be found here: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gcb.13987/full
Thanks,
Andy
—
Andy Fell
Communications Manager
Biological sciences, physical sciences, engineering & police
UC Davis News & Media Relations
UPDATE3: I missed this the first time around, but this is really the fatal flaw in the study. As water temperature increases, CO2 solubility becomes less. See the reference curve for CO2 solubility in distilled and seawater comparing temperature and Chloride concentration:
This is long established in chemistry and is indisputable, so the elevated levels of CO2 they are testing with would not naturally occur. I also believe that water under the sea ice would have far less interaction with the atmosphere, and would not be prone to dissolving as much CO2 compared to open water.
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Yet again an idiotic science experiment – it seems to gloss over the fact that atmospheric increases in temperature of 2 degrees in 80 years are not going to be mirrored in the oceans that will take vastly longer – many many generations of rock cod
SOOOO how long (how many generations) did they take to reise the temperature that +3C reported and how long would it take the bottom water to warm by that ammount?
Also, over what span of time did they increase the CO2 levels and does it allow the fish generational time to adapt?
Evolution is a miraculous thing that can happen over just a few generations.
The UC Davis Science & Climate website states “They (the fish) seem quite capable of coping with increases in CO2, and they can compensate for some warming. But they can’t deal with both stressors at the same time. That’s a problem because those things happen together–you don’t get CO2 dissolving in the ocean independent of warming.”
Haven’t we all decided, years ago, that warming water tends to expel, rather then absorb, CO2? So actually the two things DON’T happen together. Am I wrong?
I have seen reports of a similar experiment & it had exactly the same defects.
1. rapid warming, giving the samples no time to adjust
2. extremely high levels of CO2, way above those that will be experienced in nature
3. This experiment doubles the temperature rise threatened by the ICCCP (-1.8 + 2 = 0.2, not 2).
and 4) taking samples out of nature & sticking them in a bucket.
You may as well write a paper on the impact of coating them in batter and immersing them in hot oil.
Hivemind,
Good one, i needed a good chuckle this morning. That did the trick.
The oceans can never be acidic. The only way the oceans can warm is through more sunlight. There is thus no problem and this research can be binned and the money can be refunded to the taxpayers.
The article seems to have gone missing.
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-01/uoc–cwc011618.php
You are correct, it HAS disappeared. I’m updating the post to reflect this.
Too fast to be a retraction?
Phys.org also published a post about this.
It appears to even be gone from the UC Davis website and I can’t find the paper in Global Change Biology… Weird.
This fluff bit from Oct. 2017 is still up on the UC Davis website…
http://climatechange.ucdavis.edu/news/theres-nowhere-colder-go/
Before I published this, I also searched for it at Global Change Biology, and couldn’t find it in the current edition or the preview/upcoming edition.
I wonder if the journal saw the same hopelessly flawed science I did, and pulled it?
That would be an even faster retraction than Gergis!
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/10/18/gergis-et-al-hockey-stick-paper-withdrawn-finally/
The UCDavis press office pointed me to the paper:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gcb.13987/full
They also gave me a statement, which I’ve added to the body of the post.
I prefer my fish to be line-caught, not netted … that way, I feel as though I am saving the dolphins. And I also boycott Starfish Tuna … wha? … what? … did I misunderstand the assignment ?
Global Change Biology. Anything proclaiming an obvious truism “global change” is automatically suspect. It is like a sign posted outside of many homes proclaiming among other truisms “LOVE IS LOVE”.
If these fish normally live in a cold current flowing at up to 2 knots, there is a continuous supply of oxygenated water which the fish can process through their gills. Put them in a bucket of salt water, even at -1.9 C, and the fish will rapidly use up the available oxygen, and their metabolism will slow down due to lack of oxygen.
When the researchers used their colorful tubes to bubble in CO2, did they think of bubbling in some oxygen (or air) to keep the fish alive, like the bubblers used with most aquariums whose owners want to keep the fish alive?
Yes an interesting point about Dissolved Oxygen which was not mentioned in their methods. They did say:
“Two temperatures were selected; −1.0°C (~0.8°C warmer than ambient Ross Sea temperature) and 2°C (a +3°C increase from the control) simulating a Representative Concentration Pathway scenario (RCP8.5; IPCC, 2013). Three experimental CO2-acidification treatments were selected based on evidence that juvenile rockcod were tolerant to lower levels of elevated PCO2 (Davis et al., 2016) and more recent climate change scenarios predicted for 2100 (Gattuso et al., 2014; IPCC, 2013), where 450 μatm PCO2 represents Ambient seawater, 850 μatm PCO2 a Moderate scenario (RCP6.0) and 1,200 μatm PCO2 a High scenario prediction (RCP8.5; see actual experimental values in Table 1). Temperature was maintained by manipulating the flow-rate of incoming McMurdo Sound seawater into the tanks that served as water baths for the fish culture buckets,”
It occurred to me that the temperature control by means of streaming water into the tanks would mean that a lot more water was streamed into the -1 tank than the +2 tank, depending on the ambiant temperature etc. so perhaps over 28 days (when the effect apparently became significant) a lot more fresh water had passed through the control than the treatment and Dissolved Oxygen came to mind as one key parameter worth checking – all manner of differences may have occurred – physcial as well as chemical – persistent temperature gradients and so forth. But since I don’t know the volumes, flow rates, ambient temperatures and so on and so on, I can’t say.
As I read it their buckets were suspended in tanks with the sea water circulated through the tanks acting as a temperature control bath. So the fish would be isolated from the circulating sea water. Doesn’t make the study valid given the issues already raised.
Fish don’t need CO2 in the water. They need O2. Where is the mention of O2?
“The fish swam less and preferred dark zones”….this is the typical reaction fish have when exposed to elevated ammonia…..or most toxins for that matter
Either they were not doing enough water changes…or none at all…no biological filtration to remove ammonia/ammonium….or could even be the “soap” they used to pop the plastic out of the mold
Just how much can a fish swim in a bucket? Why would a fish swim to the other side of a bucket anyway? Fluorescent lighting anyone? Big ugly grant seeking creature going to attack again at any moment?
Fish feelings matter!
There’s too many in the #Me Too Climate Scare
An argument can be posited that this silly woman engaged in animal cruelty, violating whatever anti-cruelty laws are in place there, by using improper equipment, by not providing a correct environment for the rock cod during the experiment, and by forcing them into an environment which they would normally have avoided if they were left in the wild to make such a choice.
Fish are sensitive to a lot of things in the water, whether it’s freshwater or sea water. Their lives depend on it, as well as where and when they will lay eggs or have live births. This experiment fails simply on that account. I think she could be charged with animal cruelty just for the use of buckets and forcing the fish into a CO2-laden environment without giving them at least a habitat comparable to what they’d encounter in the wild.
The experiment itself is bogus. All she did was suffocate some codfish to no purpose. Sharks would be kinder to the cod.
* 1 PhD grant
+1 fertile mine
+1 bucket of cold water
= a PhD thesis.
Freshly coined! A new PhD that’ll be ready-as-rain to type up scathing evaluations of the future of the planet; who will go on to fine careers as overpaid government watchdogs; they’ll lose their enthusiasm, become bitter and keep writing shît. Then they’ll retire at 55, with an 80% pension to cover them the rest of their and their husband’s lives. Tada!
GoatGuy
Ready to light the world on fire, only to find one’s matches are wet.
80F degree difference when I walked inside my house the other day. It took me about 10 seconds to adapt after cursing at the cold air outside. -10F is **** temperature. Temperature racism?
Over-sensitizing the oceans is what the overzealous environmental scientists do. Extreme viewpoints require extreme examples.
Thanks for continuing to point this out, Anthony!
“While some species are beginning to shift to cooler places to escape warming habitats”….other species are hugely expanding their territories because of the same thing
Rare venomous sea snakes keep washing up on California beaches
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/01/14/rare-venomous-sea-snakes-keep-washing-up-on-california-beaches/?utm_term=.4a1b042ca260
So they typically live in -1.9C water and the authors exposed them to 2C water. So, they are projecting a 4C increase in the temperature of the freaking ocean? Seriously? Is there any model that predicts the entire ocean is going to warm by 4C?
Crazy.
RCP 8.5
http://ar5-syr.ipcc.ch/ipcc/sites/default/files/AR5_SYR_Figure_2.1.png
It is common knowledge that Antarctic fish become distressed at 2 deg C if suddenly exposed to this higher temperature. This was shown dramatically when I was down there when the US Navy turned off power to all buildings in turn. The science labs had their power turned off so that the fish tanks cooling system stopped – and the fish died. Science ruined for the season. Thanks Navy. No wonder they were replaced as service providers. 24 Deg C, the usual temperature of US buildings on the ice and the bright lights also affected fish physiology due to radiant energy flows. Anyway, short termed experiments like hers give no information on the acclimation ability of the fish, or how long this would take when exposed to gradual increase in temperature. as it takes time for animals to make acclimation changes and this study gives no clue as to how quickly the fish could acclimatize. Also, the circumpolar current acts a distribution transporter, not a barrier.
detnumblog, but you absolutely know the media will suck this up and inject it into their narrative anyway. Garbage in, garbage out.
When is the Government going to sponsor a cable channel with a red team/blue team format to expose this crap science and to expose how our taxpayer dollars are reaping dividends in our college education system?
PBS might be a good starting spot. 1 hour of red team arguments followed by 1 hour blue team argument and a continual back and forth. There’s surely enough information for 365 days of the year of NON-STOP debate.
Great idea but the Blue Team tends to not want to play.
and they keep threatening to have members of the red team arrested.
“When is the Government going to sponsor a cable channel with a red team/blue team format”
Would you believe the outcome? Probably not.
My first thought while reading this was exactly as the author stated. I am far from being a scientist but have kept several fresh water and salt water fish tanks. I do know that any quick change in the tank’s environment can be very hard on the fish or animals in it. Up to and including killing them. Salt water is especially sensitive to sudden changes. Cramming 80+ years of climate change into a few short weeks is not going to yield real world results. Marine animals are very adaptive to change. As long as that change occurs slowly. Make those changes quickly and you will have a very expensive collection of dead fish.
I often perform the same experiment with lobster. The difference is only one of extent. Extent and butter.
Actually good to see that a little bit of ridicule seems to have worked in this case.
As I continue my trolling war against Global Warming Drivel™ I’ve noticed ever decreasing kickback from the ‘faithful’. (or maybe Google has just developed an algorithm to keep me out of their faces?)
I have noticed very much the same. A few years ago Newspaper forums started to become vehemently sceptic to the extent that the alarmists just could not cope with being drowned out (you had to wait your turn to comment to them). The result was that many Newspapers stopped allowing comments on climate stories.
But still places like Twitter and obviously Wikipedia were filled with the activists. But recently I’ve begun to notice that when I go to twitter #climate there is often no one worth responding to. It’s a lot later, but it’s definitely the same trend: fewer and fewer alarmists to debate with and I’m now spending more and more time talking to people I agree with.
And even on the die hard alarmist website where I was blocked many many years ago – there’s now almost no alarmists commenting – and indeed the last one I found had a sceptic given them what for.
Alarmists willing to fight back – are getting a bit like Gold-dust. I can tell you where there a couple – but I’m not going to tell you because I like my entertainment bating alarmists and there’s now too few for us all to have one each.
All the more reason to keep Griff around.
” and I’m now spending more and more time talking to people I agree with.”
I’ll disagree with you on anything/everything,…cos I’m that kind of guy.
Do you want the 5 min argument or the full half hour ?
Reply to MarkW – just what I was thinking. Besides, Griff often makes me laugh. And he keeps me up to date with what’s being taught in high school now-a-days.
I found the paper. It was in the December issue and had a less moronic title…
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gcb.13987/full
A 3 °C temperature increase and a tripling of CO2 in 28 days… And the fish didn’t like it. RCP 8.5 isn’t even this stupid.
They bubble CO2 into the bucket until they deplete the buffer….then they can lower pH
…that’s the way you do it in the lab…not the way it works in real life
Pathetic. No mention of a control group. Yeah, this isn’t science. This is an experiment with a predetermined outcome squeezed into the visit window during the short Antarctic summer.
When I was still teaching, I had 8th grade students submit science projects that were better than this tripe.
Yeah… One has to wonder how much of the negative physiological responses were the result of using a bucket of water as a fish hatchery.
Surely we’re misinterpreting the descriptor of “bucket”. Surely they didn’t use mere buckets. Please tell me that “bucket” is marine-biologist shorthand for “temporary experimental apparatus for approximating localized oceanic conditions.”
rip
They do mention controls. The experimental design was reasonable for determining the result in terms of control and treatment and so forth. As I mentioned above there were questions in my view about how the temperature differences were maintained (by streaming external water) which would mean a persistent difference between control and treatment that was not measured (more ‘fresh’ seawater in the control – to keep it cooler, than in the treatment which was warmer). Since we don’t know what the ambiant temperature was we can’t tell the impact. (i.e. if it was 3C presumably no water was ever streamed into the treatment tanks – this is an extreme example to illustrate what I mean – but even a small difference in amount of fresh water over 28 days may have caused a significant difference). Anyhow, I think the paper is very worthy of criticism but it doesn’t help a case for realism and scientific accuracy to make exaggerated claims about just how bad it is 🙂
oops, 2C is what I meant. There is a 3C difference between treatment at 2C and control at -1C, I think I have understood it.
This reminds me very much of that researcher who claimed to be “studying” how additional CO2 acidifies the ocean, by introducing extra CO2 into the air above an aquarium.
I saw no mention or even apparent consideration of the fact that in the real world, that aquarium would be 12,000 feet deep, complete with currents, waves, convection, etc.
Com’on girls (the once manly pursuit of doomer climate science has been flooded with new female torch bearers – this must be another of the feminist wars or something – a sign that another white aging male bastion is being taken out), my dears CO2 is less soluble in warm waters, cheesh.
Biology was the first of the real science to be terminally corrupted by the marxbrothers… ..er…sisters? I hope they at least used new rubber gloves, unlike their male practitioners who, in search of the best amphibians for pregnancy test kits, brought a deadltly fungus from a South African toad to Costa Rica and elsewhere where it resulted in the 3xtinction of the Golden Toad. Hmm..yeast infections and papilloma are more common these days…nah that wouldnt happen would it?
Recall a few decades ago that there was a mysterious dying off of frogs and toads? Yeah, it was biologists that were killing them, but gulliblewarming came to their rescue. It made the continued unhygenic practice in Costa Rica a few years ago even that much more reprehensible- maybe criminal. These folks also killed off a lot of wild creatures by darting and tagging. They began bolting tel3vision cameras to penguins who died off, probably because it hampered their timing, aim or whatever in fishing and they starv3d to death. I dont buy the 3xplanation that they got addicted to TV. Out.
Right off the bat, these folks reveal themselves to be complete idiots.
Uh, yes you do. Warm water holds less CO2, not more.
From this point, use of the term rockcod references the alleged emerald rockcod described by the alleged researchers.
A) These fools do not even bother checking exactly how fast the rockcod’s actual environment is allegedly warming.
B) These fools fail to check what the rockcod’s environment is through all the seasons; ideally over a long cycle; i.e. greater than two solar output cycles.
C) These fools assume that ocean water will rise 2°C over some absurdly short period of time. Even where NOAA finds ocean warming, that warming rate will achieve 2°C increase centuries from now.
I didn’t see any mention where the researchers located numerous rockcod and thoroughly checked temperature and dissolved CO2 at every location and at all depths the rockcod is found.
I absolutely agree with Anthony’s and David Middleton’s criticisms.
This alleged research is another example of research that deserves Inspector General investigation; starting with grant application through this incredibly dismal result.
[Fixed the blockquote. -mod]
Well, I was always under the impression that the solubility of gases in water decreased as the temperature was increased. It works with CO2: http://sites.chem.colostate.edu/diverdi/all_courses/CRC%20reference%20data/solubility%20of%20carbon%20dioxide%20in%20water.pdf
So acidification will be less of a problem if the water gets warmer.
I note that ATheoK and I almost simultaneously thought of this.
Oh, so you know about flat soda pop, too? The warmer it gets, the faster it goes flat!
Mmm MMM!
Emerald rockcod, seasoned and lightly battered, deep fried,
served with tartar sauce, warm rye bread, and cold Killians Irish Red!
Two ‘Yums Up’!!
Of course they should have had controls in the experiment using similar buckets and everything else except for the temp and CO2 levels. If they didn’t then the study demonstrates nothing. I can’t tell whether they did as the study appears to be pay-walled.
Fish have trouble dealing with a 2C change in water temperature.
I guess these fish come from a place that doesn’t have seasons.
Can the ocean simultaneously warm and reduce pH simultaneously? If atmospheric CO2 partial pressure dominates reducing CO2 solubility with temperature then I guess so. Otherwise not. The system is complicated by oceanic temperature gradients with depth and with surface mixing issue, currents and so forth but without going further into it is doesn’t appear to be likely that the oceans are going to turn into hot acid any time soon. I would also like to see some demonstrable effects from the fossil records of similar catastrophes from epochs during which ocean temperatures were higher than they are today and atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration was also very much higher.
In addition to the bogus experimental bucket=aquarium setup, the blurb is wrong in other major ways. Emerald rockcod given their imaged size by definition cannot be near the bottom of the food chain. And the emotional appeal about their inability to cope endangering emperor penguins is worse than the polar bear nonsense. The Australian Antarctic Division has a whole website devoted to emperor penguins based on their years of research. Depending on season, the main emperor penguin diet is Antarctic silverfish, krill, or squid. Siverfish and krill are also the main diet for Adelie penguins and Antarctic toothfish. See essay No Bodies for those details. Krill feed on phytoplankton. Silverfish feed on copepods (similar to but much smaller than krill), which feed on phytoplankton. Phytoplankton are the bottom of the Antarctic food chain. And more dissolved CO2 would make them more abundant.