Marine Animals Shifting to Polar Regions to Cope with Climate Change

Marine animals are shifting to the poles to cope with climate change, according to a new study.

Related studies had earlier found that climate change will drive away most of native California fish to extinction, while non-native fish take their place in the colder waters up north.

The new study shows that many marine organisms have now started migrating to the poles and are moving faster than land animals. The observation supports the idea that climate change is forcing these animals to seek a better habitat.

Scientists from 17 institutions, including those from   UC Santa Barbara's National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS), worked on the current study. The team analyzed studies from seven countries. The study included the data set of 1,735 changes in marine life.

"The leading edge or front-line of marine species distributions is moving toward the poles at an average of 72 kilometers (about 45 miles) per decade - considerably faster than terrestrial species, which are moving poleward at an average of 6 kilometers (about 4 miles) per decade. And this is occurring even though sea surface temperatures are warming three times slower than land temperatures,"  said Elvira Poloczanska, from Australia's national science agency, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), Marine and Atmospheric Research in Brisbane and lead author of the study.

The study found that phytoplankton, zooplankton, and bony fish were moving faster toward the poles. In totality, the research claims that as the earth warms-up, marine life will start moving away from the equatorial region. They estimate that the shift of marine animals will be about ten times faster than the speed of land creatures, according to a news release. 

The study is published in the journal Nature Climate Change.

Previous research has shown that climate change is favoring growth of certain microbes, thus helping only few aquatic animals survive.