CSIRO’s Climate Adaptation and Wealth from Oceans Flagships informed that they have identified 43 species, representing about 30 percent of the inshore fish families occurring in the region, that exhibited shifts thought to be climate-related. These include warm temperate surf-zone species such as silver drummer and rock blackfish that are breeding and have become more abundant, and range increases in snapper and rock flathead.
The curator of the Australian National Fish Collection, Dr Peter Last opines that in addition to this there are up to 19 species or 5 percent, of Tasmanian coastal fish fauna have undergone serious declines or are possibly extinct locally. He added that most of the warm temperate species have moved in and colonised the cool temperate Tasmanian region.
It can well be judged that the shifts in the distribution of marine animals in response to climate change can be detrimental to some species, says Last. Dr Last and his colleagues from CSIRO and the Tasmanian Aquaculture and Fisheries Institute outlined the changes in a research paper published in the journal Global Ecology and Biogeography.
According to Dr Last south-eastern Australia is a climate change hotspot with well-documented changes already occurring over the past 70 years, including; southward penetration of the East Australian Current by about 350km and a temperature rise of almost 2ºC. He told that increased water temperatures in the Tasman Sea are likely to have a cascading effect through local marine ecosystems and, for example, the Bass Strait islands act as stepping stones or distributional pathways south.
