Chronic ocean heating fuels ‘staggering’ loss of marine life, study finds

‘To put it simply, the faster the ocean floor warms, the faster we lose fish’, the lead author of the study said. Photograph: Frank Hecker/Alamy

Chronic ocean heating is fuelling a “staggering and deeply concerning” loss of marine life, a study has found, with fish levels falling by 7.2% from as little as 0.1C of warming per decade.

Researchers examined the year-to-year change of 33,000 populations in the northern hemisphere between 1993 and 2021, and isolated the effect of the decadal rate of seabed warming from short shifts such as marine heatwaves. They found the drop in biomass from chronic heating to be as high as 19.8% in a single year.