146
Billions of snow crabs have disappeared from the ocean around Alaska in recent years, and scientists now say they know why: Warmer ocean temperatures likely caused them to starve to death. (www.cnn.com)
submitted 1 year ago by silence7@slrpnk.net to c/climate@slrpnk.net
9 comments fedilink hide all child comments

The paper is here

top 9 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[-] HuddaBudda@kbin.social 33 points 1 year ago

6 billion down to 200,000 in 3 years. Give or take a few thousands

We might end up putting these guys on the endangered species list to protect them. If it continues at this rate it may not even matter.

They found that the temperature of the water was not above the species’ thermal limits, but it did increase their caloric needs considerably (see the Perspective by Kruse). This increase, in conjunction with a restriction in range, led to an unexpected mass starvation event.

So crabs eat more in warmer seasons, and they didn't have enough food. Good news is they will survive if the temperature doesn't increase another 1-2 degrees. Bad news is, we are still on track for that.

So it looks like a lot of us are going to have to get used to synthetic crab for a bit.

[-] TWeaK@lemm.ee 24 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I think it's more impactful if you write the numbers out fully, 6,000,000,000 down to 200,000. That's 0.00003% of the population remaining

Edit: Statistically, you could say something is 100% certain if there are 6 standard deviations, or 99.9999998%. This is more than 5 standard deviations; more than 99.99994% of the population has been eradicated. I think it's all but certain that snow crabs will end up on the endangered species list.

[-] lolrightythen@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Kudos for the mathematical perspective. It seems wild to me that these crabs aren't instantly considered critically endangered. Perhaps more evidence is required to confirm the data.

Of course I didn't read the article, but harvesting doesn't help. I live about as far inland as you can get (not Russia, tho) and there are always "fresh" snow crab legs at the local grocery store.

[-] TWeaK@lemm.ee 4 points 1 year ago

Kudos for the mathematical perspective.

You should probably take it with a pinch of salt, it's been forever since I've actually done statistics :o) I just remember the 6 sigma certainty thing when I used to study Biochemistry, I may well have applied it wrong here hah.

Harvesting won't help from now on, with such a small population, but it likely wasn't a factor in reducing the population from 6 billion.

[-] lolrightythen@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Good enough for me. Objective analysis in a comment section is rare and refreshing. Cheers!

[-] Nudding@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

Seems like a pretty large domino, or am I wrong? Like how much biomass is that taken out of the food chain?

[-] TWeaK@lemm.ee 4 points 1 year ago

One type of snow crab has adults reaching 1-4 lbs, or 0.45 to 1.81 kg, so the round numbers would perhaps be either 2 lbs or 1 kg. Sticking with metric for laziness that's 5,999,800 tonnes of crab. It's roughly about the same for imperial tons also.

[-] Poem_for_your_sprog@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

Ha ha! We're all going to die!

[-] Sir_Kevin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 1 year ago

Then you have to consider, what sea life eats the crabs? What eats whatever those are.. etc etc. This is how the end begins in the oceans.

this post was submitted on 20 Oct 2023
146 points (98.0% liked)

Climate - truthful information about climate, related activism and politics.

5240 readers
358 users here now

Discussion of climate, how it is changing, activism around that, the politics, and the energy systems change we need in order to stabilize things.

As a starting point, the burning of fossil fuels, and to a lesser extent deforestation and release of methane are responsible for the warming in recent decades: Graph of temperature as observed with significant warming, and simulated without added greenhouse gases and other anthropogentic changes, which shows no significant warming

How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world: IPCC AR6 Figure 2 - Thee bar charts: first chart: how much each gas has warmed the world. About 1C of total warming. Second chart: about 1.5C of total warming from well-mixed greenhouse gases, offset by 0.4C of cooling from aerosols and negligible influence from changes to solar output, volcanoes, and internal variability. Third chart: about 1.25C of warming from CO2, 0.5C from methane, and a bunch more in small quantities from other gases. About 0.5C of cooling with large error bars from SO2.

Recommended actions to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the near future:

Anti-science, inactivism, and unsupported conspiracy theories are not ok here.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
silence7@slrpnk.net