News: Global warming drives ocean plankton north

Global warming is causing microscopic marine life in the seas around
the
UK to move north, in the biggest shift in the past 100 years and
raising
concerns that other marine species could follow, according to a new
report launched by Defra today (Tuesday 1st March 2005)

‘Charting Progress’
 http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/water/marine/uk/stateofsea/index.htm
reports that scientists working on the Continuous Plankton Recorder
(CPR) survey have found that that warm water plankton in the North Sea
are migrating northwards while cold-water plankton are moving even
further north as seawater temperature rises. Plankton are at the start
of almost all food chains in the marine environment, so movement is
likely to impact on the animals that feed upon them. Importantly they
act as a ‘biological pump’, using the carbon dioxide from the
atmosphere
as their food carbon source for growth, which in turn produces more
food
for higher organisations such as fish. Without this process, the
concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would be much higher.

The Continuous Plankton Recorder (CPR) survey has been monitoring
near-surface plankton in the North Atlantic and North Sea for the past
70 years. It is one of the longest running marine monitoring programmes
in the world.

Defra’s Chief Scientific Adviser Howard Dalton, who launched the report
along with Minister Elliot Morley said:

“The threat of climate change is becoming more certain. The CPR is one
of the most valuable long-term datasets monitoring these tiny organisms
in our seas. The shift in plankton species is surprisingly large
compared to movements of plants or bird on land. By understanding the
movement of plankton we are much better able to handle our fish
resources.”

Charting Progress provides the first integrated assessment of the state
of seas across the whole of the UK Continental Shelf and is the first
step towards adopting a holistic approach to managing the impact of
human activities on the marine environment. The report, launched today
by Minister Elliot Morley and Defra’s Chief Scientific Advisor Howard
Dalton, brings together the scientific monitoring data from various
Government Agencies and Laboratories, and describes the current state
of
UK seas.

Science has been used to assess the state of marine environment and to
provide evidence to whether we are moving towards the Government’s
vision of clean healthy, safe, productive and biologically diverse
oceans and seas as set out in the first Marine Stewardship Report,
Safeguarding our Seas, published in May 2002. Charting Progress
provides
a baseline so that over time, we can measure whether we are close to
this vision.

Further information
See

news release 89/05  http://www.defra.gov.uk/news/2005/050301a.htm
the report and more on marine environment issues on this site
 http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/water/marine/index.htm

 http://www.defra.gov.uk/science/news/050301.htm

 http://www.edie.net/news/news_story.asp?id=9619&channel=0

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