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Global warming threatens Baltic Sea marine life
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Global warming threatens Baltic Sea marine life
Global warming is adding new threats to marine life in the almost land-locked Baltic Sea, where fish are already struggling in polluted, brackish waters, a leading expert said yesterday.
?The Baltic Sea is already in bad shape... life there is in a very delicate balance,? Hans von Storch, a professor at the Institute of Coastal Research in Germany who chairs a group of 80 scientists from 12 nations studying the Baltic, told Reuters.
Higher temperatures are likely to mean more rain and snow in the Baltic region, from Copenhagen to St. Petersburg and where 85 million people live. That might make the sea ever less salty and add to a polluting runoff of fertilisers from farmland.
?A tendency towards lower salinity could be expected, which is thought to have a major influence on the Baltic Sea fauna,? scientists in the Baltex Assessment of Climate Change of the Baltic Sea Region said.
Many stocks of fish are already living on the edge of their ranges in the brackish Baltic Sea and lower salinity would further cut survival rates of fish larvae. Cod, sprat and herring are among Baltic Sea fish.
The Baltex study reflects a recent trend of trying to pinpoint risks of global warming for regions, rather than the entire planet. Most scientists say a build-up of heat-trapping gases in the air from burning fossil fuels is warming the world.
Decades of pollution, largely from the former Soviet Union, mean that concentrations of poisons ranging from dioxins to cadmium are far higher in the almost enclosed Baltic Sea than in more open seas or in the oceans.
The Baltic Sea is open to the North Sea only by straits between Denmark and Sweden, and it takes decades to renew its stagnant waters. The Baltic Sea is also bordered by Germany, Poland, Russia, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Finland.
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