Change brings whale to Israel
WHEN a 13m grey whale was spotted off the Israeli coast last year, scientists came to a startling conclusion: it must have travelled across the normally icebound route above Canada, where warm weather had briefly opened a clear channel three years earlier.
Scientists also found plankton in the North Atlantic where it had not existed for at least 800,000 years.
The whale's odyssey and the appearance of the plankton indicates a migration of species through the Northwest Passage, a sign of how global warming is affecting animals and plants in the oceans as well as on land.
"The implications are enormous. It's a threshold that has been crossed," said Philip Reid, of the Alister Hardy Foundation for Ocean Science in Plymouth, England. "It's an indication of the speed of change taking place in our world because of climate change."
The last time the world witnessed such a major incursion from the Pacific was two million years ago, which had "a huge impact on the North Atlantic", he said, driving some species to extinction as newcomers dominated competition for food.
The study of plankton and the research on the whale, co-authored by Aviad Scheinin of the Israel Marine Mammal Research and Assistance Centre, are among nearly 300 scientific papers written over the past 13 years that are being synthesised and published this year by Project Clamer, a collaboration of 17 institutes on climate change and the oceans.
Changes in the oceans' chemistry and temperature could have implications for fisheries, as species migrate northward to cooler waters, said Katja Philippart, of the Royal Netherlands Institute of Sea Research, who is co-ordinating the project.
The Northwest Passage, the route from Alaska across northern Canada, has been ice-free only twice in recorded history, in 1998 and 2007.www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/change-brings-whale-to-israel/story-e6frg6so-1226082374186?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheAustralianNewsNDM+%28The+Australian+%7C+News+%7C%29