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| Should other nations follow Alaska's lead in using aquaculture as part of a fishery enhancement programme? |
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Native cold water fish might eventually become a rarity in Irish waters. 24 October, 2008 - Cod, salmon and eels and other native cold water fish might eventually become a rarity in Irish waters - and not necessarily because of overfishing, pollution or habitat destruction. Cod, salmon and eels and other native cold water fish might eventually become a rarity in Irish waters - and not necessarily because of overfishing, pollution or habitat destruction. Ongoing studies, carried out by teams of scientists in Galway, Mayo and Maynooth suggest that long term changes in the temperature and salt content of our regional seas, brought about by climate change, may force species such as these into deeper, colder waters and replace them with warm water species such as sea bass and boarfish. As an island off the Atlantic coast of Western Europe, Ireland is an ideal laboratory from which to study the effects of climate change on the oceans, which in turn are the largest drivers of weather patterns on the planet. Almost 70 per cent of the earth is covered by the sea, which acts not only as a transporter of solar heat from the equator to the poles, but also as the world's largest natural processor of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Understanding the interactions between the oceans and the atmosphere is one of the greatest challenges facing climate scientists—not least of which is the difficulty in telling which changes occur naturally and which might be due to global warming. These challenges were identified as part of Sea Change-A National Strategy for Marine Research, Technology and Innovation 2006-2013 under which a special Marine Climate Change (MCC) Programme of research was set up in 2007 under the national Strategy for Science, Technology and Innovation and funded with €2.2 million. Its strategy for measuring, understanding and predicting subtle changes in complex natural marine systems into the future was to start by establishing what historic records of climate-related phenomena already existed from the past. From there it will develop sophisticated computer models that can explain what happened in years gone by and then, once those historic records are fully understood, it will use those models to look forward and predict the future.
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