The extreme heat during these seasons caused surface water levels to fall to record lows, prompting interventions to save the surviving fish. This was combined with data that had been collected on three fish kills that occurred in the summers of 20 in Brabant, a region in the south of the Netherlands. In search of a broader explanation to explain this question, the researchers behind this new study conducted a thorough literature review, searching for collected data on three phenomena: sensitivity to hypoxia and high temperatures aquatic surface breathing and the size-related scaling of anaerobic metabolism in fish.
“Resolving this discrepancy is urgently needed, as rapid climate change increases periods of drought and extreme heat worldwide and we need to understand the tolerance of fishes of different sizes to these events.” A poorer metabolism is putting large fish at risk “There is usually a discrepancy between the interpretation by the authors of some laboratory studies versus fieldwork experience when it comes to explaining whether and why larger fish are more vulnerable than smaller fish to warming and deoxygenated waters,” said Daniel Pauly, co-author of the new study and principal investigator of the Sea Around Us initiative. To make matters more complex, experimental studies and fisheries management literature can sometimes contradict each other, making it particularly challenging for researchers to draw fixed conclusions about which fish might be most at risk under certain conditions. However, it is less clear whether this trend holds within a species as well. Previous scientific research has established that there is an inter-species correlation between a fish’s body size and its sensitivity to hypoxia and thermal stress. The research was published in the journal Environmental Biology of Fishes.
As the old proverb goes, “there’s always a bigger fish.” But will that hold for much longer?Īccording to a new paper examining drought-induced fish deaths in the Netherlands, climate change is disproportionately impacting larger and older fish, which are struggling to adapt as our waters become warmer and more deoxygenated.
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