A plankton bloom that resulted in thousands of dead fish washing up along a roughly 4-kilometer (2.15-mile) stretch of beach on Thursday in Thailand’s southern Chumphon province may have been triggered by climate change, according to an expert.
Thon Thamrongnawasawat, deputy dean of the Faculty of Fisheries at Kasetsart University said fish deaths have been attributed to blooms, a natural occurrence that lowers oxygen levels in the water and kills fish.
“Various natural phenomena, such as coral bleaching or plankton bloom, have naturally occurred for thousands to tens of thousands of years. However, when global warming occurs, it intensifies and increases the frequency of existing phenomena,” he said.
Plankton blooms last two to three days on average, according to local authorities, and occur once or twice a year.
Officials have collected seawater for further evaluation and analysis.
According to the British Met Office, the arrival of the natural climate phenomenon El Nio, which has a warming effect on the entire planet, as well as human-caused climate change, which results in higher temperatures for the oceans and land, are both contributing factors to the global sea surface temperatures for April and May being the highest on record for those months.
Numerous dead fish have washed up on Texas beaches this month, and experts are predicting algal blooms along the British coast due to warming sea temperatures.
In Southern California, a toxic algal bloom has caused hundreds of dolphins and sea lions to wash up on beaches dead or sick. While strong coastal upwelling rather than high temperatures were more of a contributor to California’s algal blooms, scientists believe that climate change will likely result in an increase in toxic algal blooms since some thrive in warm water.
“Whether it’s Australia and places like the Great Barrier Reef or even places around England which are experiencing quite bad marine heatwaves at the moment, it’s really going to be detrimental to those local ecosystems,” said Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick, a climate scientist with the University of New South Wales in Australia.
Source-CNN
