UN News Centre: Climate change is already impacting the world’s oceans and will have serious consequences for the hundreds of millions of people who depend on fishing for their livelihoods, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).Changes in sea temperatures alter the body temperature of aquatic species used for human consumption and therefore impact their metabolism, growth rate, reproduction and susceptibility to diseases and toxins, FAO said today, at the start of a four-day scientific seminar in Rome on climate change and marine fisheries.
Impacts on fisheries that have already been observed include an increase in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, such as the El Niño phenomenon in the South Pacific; the warming of the world’s oceans, with the Atlantic in particular showing signs of warming deep below the surface; and warmer-water species increasing toward the South and North Poles.
….FAO says that some 42 million people work directly in the fishing sector, the great majority in developing countries. Counting in those who work in processing, supply, marketing and distribution, the fishing industry supports several hundred million jobs….
Fishing in Senegal, photograph by Tagon, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 License
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