Marine Heatwaves Rising

I took a short dive into marine heatwaves--the phenomenon of extra-warm patches of water--and was worried by what I found. Read my feature for Yale e360 here:

https://e360.yale.edu/features/as-waters-warm-ocean-heatwaves-are-growing-more-severe

The condensed version:

1. A record-breaking Blob of warm water formed off the coast of North America this summer. It didn't get much press, perhaps eclipsed by wildfires and the pandemic. But it was (and still is) there!

2. There's an interesting debate about how to define marine heatwaves. Under the current definition, which is measured against an historic baseline, marine heatwaves are becoming more common (and indeed we will be in a "near permanent heatwave" by 2100) simply because the ocean is getting warmer overall... not because heatwaves in and of themselves are becoming more wavy, per se. Untangling the different ways of looking at heatwaves will be interesting!

3. No matter how you define heatwaves, the underlying problem of warming oceans is important. It shifts ecosystems for stationary creatures like kelps; moves fish into unfamiliar waters potentially causing fisheries conflicts; and, most interestingly, pushes species into each other to create novel ecosystem clashes. In 2016, warm water pushed whales closer to shore in search of anchovies, leading them right into a delayed crab fishery and a shipping lane. The result: whale entanglements and ship strikes.

Once again the solution is... slow the warming of the planet!! But also encourage dynamic fisheries management, so that new ecosystem clashes can be spotted, predicted and accounted for.