If ocean temperatures rise, stocks of northern shrimp could be seriously affected, a study published in the Science Magazine shows.
The international team of scientists found that, on average, northern shrimp eggs hatched in time with the spring phytoplankton bloom, the main food source for its larvae. The mating time of the species in the preceding year, in its turn, which has to be exactly timed to the phytoplankton bloom, has been set on evolutionary time scales. That means that it cannot adjust in accordance with comparatively short-term mean temperature changes – and if the timing is off, that means less food for the larvae.
Thde study was lead by Peter Koeller, a researcher from the Bedford Institute of Oceanography. In an interview with the BBC, he pointed out that an explosion in the northern shrimp population in the 1980s and 1990s was linked to a drop in sea temperatures at that time, and that it was feasible that the opposite could happen “as the climate changes”. “As surface waters warm, this would eventually result in warmer water at the bottom, which would lead to faster development of eggs and earlier hatching,” he explained to the BBC. “The larvae would be further removed from period of food abundance, which would mean poor survival rates and fewer shrimp.”