Freya Womersley

Oct 7, 2024 | ca.news.yahoo.com | David Sims |Freya Womersley

Whale sharks on collision course as warming seas may force them into shipping lanes – new studyGlobal warming has the potential to reshuffle the spaces used by life on Earth, across all ecosystems. And our new research shows whale sharks – the world’s largest fish – could be at risk, as warming oceans may force them into busy human shipping lanes. More than 12,000 marine species are expected to redistribute in future as seas warm up.

Oct 7, 2024 | nature.com | Freya Womersley |Lara L. Sousa |Nicolas E. Humphries |Gonzalo Araujo |Adam Barnett |Michael L. Berumen | +17 more

AbstractClimate change is shifting animal distributions. However, the extent to which future global habitats of threatened marine megafauna will overlap existing human threats remains unresolved. Here we use global climate models and habitat suitability estimated from long-term satellite-tracking data of the world’s largest fish, the whale shark, to show that redistributions of present-day habitats are projected to increase the species’ co-occurrence with global shipping.