CSIRO Climate Shift Pushing Wide Range Of Marine Species To North, South Ends Of GBR

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Marine wildlife is coping with our warming world in many different ways – and the inhabitants of Australia's shallow seas have shown the two most obvious responses. Some species have shifted southwards, apparently to escape waters that have warmed by 1.5 °C since the 1950s – but others have moved northwards, seemingly embracing the warmer conditions.

To find out what has been happening along the country's east coast, Elvira Poloczanska at CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia, and colleagues counted all the animals and their species in the intertidal region of 22 rocky shores spanning 1435 kilometres. Then they compared their findings with surveys performed in the 1940s and 50s.

One-third of the 30 species they studied had shifted in that time – but "we found very little evidence that species are migrating further south", Poloczanska says. Some species actually appear to have moved towards warmer climes: two species of gastropod – Notoacmea petterdi and Cellana tramoserica – now occupy more northerly waters than they did 60 years ago.

Things are different elsewhere on Australia's coast. A new review of marine biodiversity in south-eastern Australia found strong evidence that several species have begun migrating poleward. The spiny sea urchin (Centrostephanus rodgersii), which lives in subtidal settings, has extended its range southwards by about 160 kilometres for every decade of the past 40 years. Many types of macroalgae, barnacles and 45 species of fish – representing around 15 per cent of coastal fish species in temperate south-eastern Australia – have also shifted southwards in recent decades.

EDIT

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20321-mixed-response-to-climate-change-on-australias-coasts.html