It's well-accepted that rising temperatures worldwide will one day lead to the angry ocean rising up and swallowing us (and our precious cities). Before that happens though, it would appear global warming will make life slightly less delicious for humans than we previously imagined, with a new report that predicts baby lobsters won't survive rising ocean temperatures.
A study by scientists from the University of Maine Darling Marine Center and the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences found that baby lobsters had difficulty surviving in water that was five degrees warmer than is typically found in the western Gulf of Maine, a key habitat for American lobsters. Those lobsters that did manage to survive the higher temperatures developed faster than baby lobsters do in lower temperatures, but the study found that very few actually made it that far.
The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Science is predicting that by 2100, seas will have warmed by five degrees fahrenheit. Scientists involved with the study pointed out that further south from Maine, there's been "a near total collapse" of the lobster population off Rhode Island, and the lobster catch south of Cape Cod has been reduced to 3.3 million pounds from a peak of 22 million pounds in 1997.
Obviously the inability to eat delicious sea bugs due to rising sea levels is pretty low on the list of concerns, below things like having a home on dry land, being killed by extreme heat or having to fight for resources in the scorched wasteland that was once Earth. This is all very stressful, I'm going to need a drink to deal with all of this. Oh great, thanks, science.
