Long Island Sound to Become the New Chesapeake?
Nature writer/blogger Tom Andersen writes that Long Island Sound is turning into Chesapeake Bay. What does he mean by that? It means that the waters of Long Island Sound are slowly warming. As the waters warm, the types of aquatic animals that they support is changing. That is not mere supposition or anecdote; it is born out by data from fifty years worth of trawl surveys conducted by the University of Rhode Island.
According to Jeremy Collie, professor of oceanography at the University of Rhode Island's Graduate School of Oceanography, the fish community has shifted progressively from vertebrate species (fish) to invertebrates (lobsters, crabs and squid) and from benthic or demersal species -- those that feed on the bottom -- to pelagic species that feed higher in the water column. In addition, smaller, warm-water species have increased while larger, cool-water species have declined.
"This is a pretty dramatic change, and it's a pattern that is being seen in other ecosystems, including offshore on Georges Bank and other continental shelf ecosystems, but we're in the relatively unique position of being able to document it. These patterns are likely being seen in estuaries around the world, but nowhere else has similar data," said Collie.
Collie predicts that in the near future, Long Island Sound will become more suitable for blue crabs than for the types of animals that traditionally live in the Sound. In fact, that might already be happening.
"Homarus americanus," the lobster Connecticut fishermen have been catching for centuries, is a cold-water species. The sound is at the very southern end of its natural range.
Marine specialists say temperature records for the past 30 years indicate the sound is slowly heating up, a trend some attribute to global warming. If the sound's average temperature continues to rise by just a few degrees, lobsters could disappear from its waters.
But the same warming trend that seems to be hurrying the decline of lobsters and other cold-water species in the sound could offer a strange sort of ecological compensation. Blue crabs, creatures that flourish in warmer waters, are booming.
While hard numbers are nonexistent, in the past year, fishermen in Connecticut and Long Island have been telling marine specialists they've never seen so many blue crabs.
The warming of Long Island Sound is likely to affect the entire Atlantic Coast, as all of our waters are subject to the warming wrought by greenhouse gases and climate change. If Long Island Sound turns into Chesapeake Bay, what might the Chesapeake become? The Outer Banks? The Florida Keys?
