Unprecedented Hauraki Gulf heat waves revealed by marine lab’s historic data set. “It seems that every year is another warm year regardless of whether it’s an El Niño or not,”
by Wagamaga
Unprecedented Hauraki Gulf heat waves revealed by marine lab’s historic data set. “It seems that every year is another warm year regardless of whether it’s an El Niño or not,”
by Wagamaga
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Sea-surface readings at the Leigh Marine Laboratory north of Auckland since that time indicate the “unprecedented nature of recent marine heat waves,” according to Dr. Nick Shears of the University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau.
The number of marine heat wave days and their cumulative intensity has increased sharply since 2012, Shears and his co-authors write in a paper published in the New Zealand Journal of Marine and Freshwater Research.
In past decades, some years had no heat waves, but that hasn’t happened since 2012.
Sponges “melting,” becoming detached from rocks and dying, along with seaweed and kelp die-offs, are among temperature effects.
Especially warm autumns and winters have likely facilitated an increase in subtropical and tropical species such as the long-spined sea urchin Centrostephanus rodgersii, a voracious herbivore that can lay waste to deep reef environments.