- Big fish have always held a big spot in our hearts.
- Oh! - Yes.
- It's so -- -So it's not surprising that
when a big fish shows up, it's big news.
March 2022.
This 10-foot sturgeon was pulled out of the Fraser River
in British Columbia.
Best estimates have it around 600 pounds.
August 2021.
For the first time in living memory,
600 pound blue fin tuna show
up less than a mile off of shore of New York City,
100 miles away from the deeper waters
these giants usually prefer.
And July 2021, north Oregon coast.
A 100-pound opah fish washes up in pristine condition.
Uncommon for that shallow depth and latitude.
The list of headlines goes on and on and on.
And millions of social media posts with millions of views
all confirm, big fish are having a big moment.
- Yeah, you let 'em know!
Yeah, you let 'em know!
You let 'em know!
- And in a world plagued by toxic pollutants,
ecosystem shake up, and massive ecological disasters,
are fish responding?
Are fish getting bigger?
Let's take a closer look at that opah fish.
Typically located in tropical waters,
this fish made headlines across the US
after washing up on the north Oregon coast.
Tiffany Boothe of the Seaside Aquarium in Seaside, Oregon,
was there the day the fish washed up on shore.
- Automatically, I was like, "Oh, my gosh, that's an opah."
And so the photo actually made it seem quite small.
I thought I was gonna come across this little tiny fish.
And so we drove up,
and it's like this 3 1/2 foot, 100-pound fish.
We were both just in awe.
- This was the first time Tiffany has seen
an opah in the wild.
They're uncommon in Oregon waters.
- What was really rare about this fish
was that he was so close to shore,
so that when it did die -- and we don't know why it died --
it could have been of old age, it was a full grown fish --
it washed up in pristine condition.
- And this wasn't the first time that southern warm water fish
have shown up in Oregon.
- Couple years ago, we found a triggerfish on the beach,
which is a tropical fish
that you'll usually find down in Mexico and Hawaii.
We found a couple live Pacific snake eels,
which same thing there.
They're a type of fish that's usually found way further south.
- The case of the opah suggests that maybe
fish aren't getting bigger,
that maybe larger species are showing up I unexpected places,
and it's possible that water temperature
is playing a role here.
Dr. Cisco
Werner of the National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Association studies just this,
the impact of changing ecosystems on fish populations.
- As greenhouse gasses trap energy from the sun,
all components of earth's system are warming.
The oceans in particular have absorbed
over 90% of the excess heat resulting from global warming.
As temperatures change, as the oceans warm,
fish will shift their locations, generally pole-wards,
so in our case, northward.
Or they can also expand their ranges, you know,
to take advantage of perhaps other parts of the ocean
that now become available to them
with the changes in temperature.
Along the east coast, we have seen shifts in cod populations,
northward shifts.
We've seen shifts in the migration of blue fin tuna,
which used to perhaps reach the US-Mexico border.
Now they're central California and northward.
And in Alaska, we're seeing shifts of Pacific cod,
shifting really rapidly,
and by that, I mean in just a matter of four of five years,
several hundreds of kilometers.
- Marine research scientist Kathy Mills
studies the Maine coast,
one of the regions that has seen some of
the most drastic temperatures shifts in the world.
- So the Gulf of Maine is warming about three times
faster than the global oceans.
And over the past 15 years, we've actually been warming
about five times faster than oceans around the world.
- These conditions turn Maine into a look into the future
for other parts of the world
if ocean temperatures don't stabilize.
- And we are also seeing changes
in seasonality associated with that,
so not only are fish being found in different places,
but they're being found at different times.
- This has a huge impact on a local economy,
where fisheries bring in millions of dollars
and produce thousands of jobs each years.
Maine cod, once a favorite on Maine fishers,
has been hit particularly hard.
- The cod fishery really supported
the first fisheries in the country.
And we have seen these populations
decline as waters warm.
So they just aren't able to be as productive
and continue producing as many young
and have those be as viable and survive to adulthood
as they could under cooler temperature conditions.
In contrast, though,
an important fishery in the region now,
and in fact, the highest value single species fishery
in the country is American lobster.
Its population growth has really been favored
by the warmer temperatures that we've experienced
in the past couple of decades.
So as waters warm, they've moved into a really sweet spot
where lobsters were incredibly productive.
- As a result, lobstering in Maine has exploded,
further boosting the state's economy.
But what happens as water temperatures continue to rise
and move beyond thresholds conducive
of a healthy lobster population?
- It is really critically important that we not
only focus on adaptation,
but think about mitigating the long term trajectory
of climate change.
There are limits to adaptation.
There's only so much that we can do to absorb
and adjust to the changes that are occurring.
- We know we are continued ocean warming
that will play out over the next couple decades.
And experts agree, we do have a choice to slow
or even turn around these trends
by implementing measures to curtail or carbon dioxide
and other greenhouse gas emissions.
Doing so is critical for the long term trajectory
of marine ecosystems
and the people that rely on them.