In America most of the fish are coming from Bering Sea as it provides roughly half the fish caught in US waters annually and nearly a third caught globally.
But it is now under threat as the changing ecosystem may support less due to greenhouse conditions. USC marine ecologist Dave Hutchins said that the experiments show Bering Sea harvesting fish like Pollock and hake are under great danger as the Bering Sea is warming up.
According to him Bering Sea is like a canary in a coal mine as the ocean shows climate change effects. And as the sea is changing to a more temperate ecosystem the warmer, marine mammals and birds are dying and the sea becoming less productive in comparison to previous years. Hutchinson explained that Bering Sea is highly productive due to diatoms, a large type of phytoplankton, which are eaten by large zooplankton, which are then eaten by large fish. “But the study found that greenhouse conditions favoured smaller types of phytoplankton over diatoms.
This would destroy the food chain: as diatoms become scarce, animals that eat diatoms would become scarce, and so forth, express Hutchinson. According to him this change could undermine an important climate regulator called the ‘biological pump’, which is occur when diatom die leaving heavier carbon-based sinking to the seafloor which remains there for years. Adding to this smaller species also end up re-releasing CO2 on seafloor. This could make the sea weak to soak up atmospheric carbon dioxide. The researchers are doing study by collecting samples from Bering Sea to save the species of Bering Sea from extinct. As per the study temperature was an important driver of the shift caused by rising carbon dioxide concentrations in the Sea.
