Alaska salmon affected by global warming
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Alaskan wild salmon has been an uncommon success story among over-exploited fisheries, with healthy runs and robust catches that fetch ever- higher prices at fish markets and high-end restaurants in Los Angeles, New York, Tokyo and London. So the emergence of disease, Times staff writer Kenneth R. Weiss reports, has come as a shock to fishermen and fisheries managers:
Fishermen and regulators who have cooperated to save species from overfishing and local environmental hazards have been caught unprepared to deal with forces beyond their control: how to manage a fishery for climate change.... Cold-temperature barriers are giving way, allowing parasites, bacteria and other disease-spreading organisms to move toward higher latitudes.’Climate change isn’t going to increase infectious diseases but change the disease landscape,’ said marine ecologist Kevin D. Lafferty, who studies parasites for the U.S. Geological Survey. ‘And some of these surprises are not going to be pretty.’