Warming water globally leads to changes off the coast of Massachusetts
As ocean temperatures continue to rise, the water around Massachusetts is warming with it and scientists said the changes are becoming increasingly visible along our coast.
Colleen Bowie, who has visited Revere Beach for decades, said she has noticed differences over the years.
"It's still beautiful, we're lucky to be here," Bowie said. "I appreciate it, but I wish it wasn't changing so much."
Researchers said this summer's ocean temperatures in the Bay State are part of a clear climate change trend. That warmth may be behind recent unusual sightings and health advisories — from a manatee spotted in Mashpee earlier this month to an alert in Falmouth about vibrio vulnificus, a bacteria that can cause a flesh-eating disease typically found along the Gulf Coast.
Dr. Kristina Dahl, Vice President of Science at Climate Central, said warming waters are allowing new species to migrate north and creating conditions for harmful bacteria and algal blooms to thrive.
"With future global warming, we'll continue to see the oceans warm," Dahl said. "And we'll continue to see this poleward march of many species and the sorts of things you're seeing with respect to bacteria, or harmful algal blooms offshore. I lived on Cape Cod for years and the idea that you would see a manatee is just nuts. Obviously, animals are unpredictable. So you get things like isolated one-off animals showing up in weird places just somewhat naturally. But given that manatees are a warm water species, you don't expect to see them in Massachusetts normally but it could be a sign or symptom of our warming temperatures."
The warming trend is already driving traditional Massachusetts marine life, such as cod and lobster, further north in search of colder waters, according to researchers in Woods Hole.
"One of the remarkable things is just how quickly the oceans are changing," said Glen Gawarkiewicz, senior scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. "It's absolutely important that we keep up our ocean observations."
Over the last two decades, the frequency of warm salty water breaking off from the Gulf Stream and making its way up the east coast has increased 70%, according to Gawarkiewicz.
"We're fortunate now to be working more closely with the commercial fishing industry. And we have more and more fishing vessels that are taking temperature and salinity profiles," he added. "But a lot of these changes have been unexpected."
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
New York Times
34 minutes ago
- New York Times
Meet the Beautiful Dragonfly That Thrives in Your Pollution
As humans reshape environments, we drive away many creatures. A select few species stick around or even come to join us: the rats who relish our trash, the pigeons who make cliffs of our skyscrapers, the coyotes as at home in our cul-de-sacs and city parks as they are in deserts. Add to that list the blue dasher dragonfly, an azure-tailed aeronaut with a canted, ready-for-takeoff stance. In a paper published last month in the journal BMC Ecology and Evolution, researchers detailed the survival strategies of these insects, who happily make their homes in the scuzzier corners of our built environment. Most dragonflies are so sensitive to pollutants that their very presence indicates a healthy ecosystem. As a result, they 'don't tend to do well in urban environments,' said Manpreet Kohli, an assistant professor at Baruch College at the City University of New York and an author of the paper. The blue dasher flips this rule on its head. Across North America, this bug skips national parks for cities, said Ethan Tolman, also an author of the paper and a postdoctoral research associate at Virginia Tech. While leading high schoolers on insect-collecting trips, Dr. Kohli said, she would spot the dragonflies throughout New York City and New Jersey, their larvae thriving in algae-choked seeps and the adults decorating Turtle Pond in Central Park. 'You'll be like, 'Oh my God, there's a dragonfly here?'' Dr. Kohli said. 'And it's most likely a blue dasher.' Unlike some dragonfly species, blue dashers aren't known to migrate regularly or even to move much between ponds. The authors decided to investigate how these bugs arrived in different cities in the first place — and, once there, how they have hovered gracefully above the many pressures of urban living. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Gulf dead zone over 4,700 square miles
NEW ORLEANS (WGNO) — Scientists released findings showing that the Gulf dead zone west of the Mississippi River is around 4,772 square miles. The dead zone is an area of low to no oxygen that can kill fish and marine life. Its size fluctuates throughout the year. Last year, according to their 2024 study, the western dead zone was over 6,700 square miles. Homicide investigation in Marigny after Thursday morning shooting Nancy Rabalais, a professor in the Department of Oceanography and Coastal Sciences at LSU, focuses her research on the Gulf dead zone and the organisms that live in the sediments on the seabed. Rabalais said the dead zone forms as a result of nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorous that get funneled from the Mississippi river from agricultural runoff. These nutrients fuel the growth of phytoplankton, which are single-celled plants. When they die, they float down to the bottom waters, and in the decomposition, oxygen is used up. The low oxygen area is usually in the lower-half of the water column or toward the bottom. Rabalais said there's usually enough oxygen in the higher parts to support typical marine life. She said organisms have to migrate into other areas or move higher in the water column, which is not normally where they live. She said this can expose them to higher rates of predation. Barktoberfest being held in Thibodeaux The size of the dead zone varies throughout the year and from year to year. It's size depends on the amount of freshwater discharged into the Gulf and the amount of nitrogen and phosphorous in the water. 'It didn't use to be as prevalent and severe as it is now, especially since the 1970s it's more prevalent and it's more severe towards the bottom than it was historically and that has to do with the increase in the nitrogen and the phosphorous that's delivered to the gulf from the watershed,' Rabalais said. The nitrogen and phosphorous increase is related to agricultural farmland and crops. The soil releases nitrogen and phosphorous but farmers also use them in their fertilizers. The excess runoff falls into the Mississippi river and reaches the gulf. Rabalais said there are times of the year where there are fewer fish in the area than there would be if the dead zone wasn't present. She said it's difficult to pinpoint if the dead zone is causing issues for the fishing industry, since there's so many other factors involved, but she said it could be a factor. Rabalais said in order to fix the problem, the amount of nitrogen and phosphorous that reaches the gulf needs to be reduced. This is primarily a city wastewater and agricultural fertilizer Posts Hot Saturday with afternoon storms ICE officers, impersonators accused of abusing women More than 30K wireless power banks recalled over fire, explosion risk Border Report Live: Coast Guard joins border mission from air, land and sea 3 babies have died of congenital syphilis in New York: What is it? Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Solve the daily Crossword
Forbes
2 hours ago
- Forbes
Two Thirds Of Trash Found In Global Rivers Is Plastic, Study Finds
Pieces of plastic, including bottles, bags, straws and cutlery, make up two thirds of the rubbish found in rivers around the world, according to a new analysis. The research by experts at the University of California, Santa Barbara, used on-the-ground data from Mexico, Jamaica, Panama, Ecuador, Kenya, Vietnam, Thailand and Indonesia. Over the three-year period, local teams collectively removed and analyzed 3.8 million kilograms of river debris, the equivalent to 380,000,000 single-use plastic water bottles, with 66% classified as microplastic. The researchers also found substantial variation in the amount of plastic pollution intercepted in rivers studied, but all contained plastic debris of some sort. Based on their findings, researchers now estimate 1.95 million metric tons of travels down rivers worldwide every year. The study has been published as negotiators in Geneva failed to reach an agreement on an international treaty to curb plastic pollution. Lead author, Chase Brewster, a project scientist in University of California, Santa Barbara's Benioff Ocean Science Laboratory, said it was largest continuous dataset, which has ever been produced on the subject of plastic pollution in rivers, in an interview. Brewster added the research helps underline and scope and the scale of the issue around the world. 'This problem is not going away and it is global,' he told me. 'We should not be ignoring in this day and age the fact two thirds of everything coming down our rivers is now plastic.' Brewster said the researchers on the project also engaged with local communities and he hoped the data would help them take targeted action 'The more involved and engaged people are, and the more empowered they feel in their communities, the more likely they are to change behavior and influence legislation in their areas. 'More often than not, these communities are not trying to pollute. It's the larger institutions who are failing them. There's no access to waste management services, or other options.' Brewster said the report makes a number of recommendations, including creating more of a value for plastic waste to discourage people from throwing it away and letting it go to waste. He added one of the big problems is that it is still cheaper to produce virgin plastic than it is to make recycled plastic, so there need to be incentives like bottle deposit fees, and virgin production caps to create better market conditions for a circular economy. The study also calls for greater support for the informal waste-picking sector in certain parts of the world and more investment in waste management and recycling infrastructure and services. It also recommends more consistent and more transparent monitoring and data collection to inform targeted upstream actions. In addition, it calls for well-designed local and national policies as well as ambitious international frameworks to address the different scales of the problem. 'Negotiators and country officials can use this data to assess the river plastic pollution problem in real life, look at differences in pollution in different places, and test ideas about what policies and systems are working,' Brewster added. Anthony Merante, senior plastics campaigner at Oceana Canada, said the oceans have become the dumping grounds for the world's plastic waste, in an email. Merante added people have over-plasticized their lives and invested in single-use, disposable systems hoping that recycling will save us. 'Not a single river studied was free from plastic, emphasizing that this is a planetary problem we all must act to correct,' he said. 'The solution is clear; we need to reduce plastic production and use and invest in solutions that actually work like refill and reuse.'
