Researchers are raising the alarm for the umpteenth time on the dangers of global warming in a new study which highlights the risks of extinction of several hundred species of fish.
In this study published in the journal Science, the researchers studied 700 species of freshwater and seawater fish. They thus found that global warming considerably threatens the survival of these species because the higher the temperature of the the water rises and the more the fish find it difficult to breathe and move.
Embryos and pregnant fish are particularly at risk, but also freshwater fish which, unlike seawater fish, cannot move out of the lake or river to find a cooler area.
Concretely, a temperature increase of 1.5 ° C, in the best of cases, would endanger 10% of the species studied while in the worst scenario, an increase of 4 to 5 ° C, 60% of these species may not survive by 2100. And yet losing a single species would already be harmful to the ecosystem, as Flemming Dahlke explains to the Guardian in comments reported by Geo :
Consider the North Sea, we believe that by the end of the century the temperature will be too high for Atlantic cod to spawn in this region. If this species is expelled from the system, it will have a significant impact on the ecosystem itself and all processes and interactions with the species because it is an important predator.
Should we expect the worst?