Schooled: Warmth-Sensitive Fish Teach Us They Swam In A 4-5°C Warmer Ocean About 5000 Years Ago

Extensive hake (fish) skeletal remains in ocean waters too cold for this species to occupy today suggest past ocean temperatures were several degrees warmer.

Fish habitats are limited by specific temperature boundaries. In a new study, for example,  Wheeland  and Morgan (2020) found there was a pronounced ocean warming from the 1980s to late 1990s off the coasts of Greenland. This temperature shift changed the distribution of halibut habitat. Since then, however, there has been no net warming in the study region (through 2016).

Image Source: Wheeland  and Morgan, 2020

In a new study, Bas et al. ( 2020)  document a large presence of a temperature-sensitive fish species (hake) at 53°S (southernmost South America) when current hake venture no further south than 47°S. This latitude differential for hake habitat suggests the ocean was 4-5°C warmer than today about 5000 years ago (Mid-Holocene).

Image Source: Bas et al., 2020

Evidence for anomalously cold present-day sea surface temperatures in southern South America relative to past millennia has also been documented by Caniupán et al., 2014. This region’s temperatures may actually be nearly the coldest of the last 10,000 years – cooler than the temperature depths reached during the “global Little Ice Age”.

Image Source: Caniupán et al., 2014



4 responses to “Schooled: Warmth-Sensitive Fish Teach Us They Swam In A 4-5°C Warmer Ocean About 5000 Years Ago”

  1. Yonason

    Silly lazy temperature-sensitive fish. Don’t they know how easy it is to evolve antifreeze?! //sarc//

    Seriously, warmists have come to many false conclusions based on their wrong assumptions about the dynamics of fish in an ocean with large temperature swings. Blaming effects of natural variability on humans seems to be their knee-jerk reaction. But here’s Professor Tim Patterson to set them straight.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4SN1-vwBVs

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIkQL6K8uY4

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3MIRroP5cA

    It’s an old presentation, but a good one for background on the topic.

    See also here…
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wyi17X50FcM

    Not meant to replace or modify Kenneth’s post, but to supplement it by showing how natural variation affects fish presence or absence for other oceanic regions.

  2. RoHa

    This it total nonsense. It suggests that fish can move, and that they will move to warmer or cooler water as they prefer.

    The very idea is ridiculous.

  3. salah bela

    Hello
    thank you for this beautifull website
    good

  4. tom0mason

    Darwin vindicated — AGAIN!

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