Last year, 2014, was the hottest year ever recorded on Earth. Unlike other worldwide problems from which Canadians might feel relatively safe and isolated, Canada is ground zero of global climate change due to extremely rapid warming in the Arctic Ocean, which is driving the warming across the nation and in surrounding seas.
This portends significant and rapid changes in Canada’s ecosystems, including dramatic changes in the appearance, biodiversity and functions of many iconic landscapes, thereby considerably transforming Canada’s economies and societies. These transformations could occur much more rapidly than previously feared due to tipping points in both physical and biological parts of ecosystems.
Changes in the ocean are much more rapid than changes on land, particularly biological responses, and Canada depends on its ocean ecosystems in many ways.
A summary of knowledge about the effects of global change on Canada’s Pacific marine ecosystems, which I published with colleagues in 2014, indicated extensive ecological effects of global change with serious implications for the entire region’s coastal- and ocean-dependent economies. These findings are consistent with the fifth assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, but they are specific to Canada’s Pacific.
We stressed the likelihood that these recent observed changes underestimate near-future changes because many of the patterns emerged during a “cold regime” along Canada’s Pacific coast between 2006 and 2013, which likely masked and temporarily delayed the underlying longer-term ecological changes.
Then, just as our paper was in press at the beginning of 2014, a warm water anomaly nicknamed “The Blob” spread across the Gulf of Alaska before moving into near-shore waters of Canada’s Pacific at the end of 2014, where it persists. This anomaly has low nutrients, low biological productivity, modified currents, dissolved oxygen and acidity.
Seasoned experts have not seen an anomaly like the Blob, which preceded the recent emergence of El Niño conditions. Reduced Arctic sea ice cover causing reduced North Pacific winds can explain this warm blob, as well as the decades-long declines in North Pacific productivity.
These recent changes have triggered rapid responses in the distributions, productivity and abundances of plankton, fish, mammals, birds and reptiles. Indicators include green sea turtles in Oregon, tuna and ocean sunfish in coastal Alaska, massive seabird die-offs in British Columbia, dramatic sea-lion mortalities in California, northward shifts of squid and unusual abundances of gelatinous animals. These indicators foreshadow potentially major effects on the whole region’s economies and societies.
The Blob and its ecological ramifications were thus the main focus of the State of the Pacific Ocean meeting at the Institute of Ocean Sciences in Sidney on March 10 and 11. This sudden warming was discussed as marking an important transition in the data describing oceanographic and biological changes in the northeast Pacific Ocean.
This meeting also highlighted Canada’s science capacity problem, especially in Fisheries and Oceans Canada, where retired or soon-to-retire individuals hold most of the scientific knowledge about Canada’s Pacific oceans, the life inhabiting them, and dependent economies and communities.
Early-career staff are high quality, but they are chronically tasked to do more with less, to the point where services, knowledge, and capacity inevitably degrade.
DFO personnel were banned for many years from using the term climate change or doing work specifically to understand its effects. Scientists were also restricted from speaking freely about climate change. DFO’s commitment to marine planning initiatives in the Pacific region was reduced as a federal strategy to reduce barriers to fossil-fuels production, transport and combustion globally — activities that are counterproductive to our children’s futures.
The government of Canada initiated the Aquatic Climate Change Adaptation Services Program, but its funding is less than 0.0002 per cent of Canada’s GDP. Another program of similar magnitude, the Marine Environmental Observation Prediction and Response Network, is supporting initial studies of ocean acidification and other risks — starting late in the game.
Compared with nothing, these are positive developments, but given that near-future challenges related to oceans and climate will affect a significant portion of Canada’s GDP, and broader values, I wonder how Canada can hope to plan for a prosperous and sustainable future with such minimal capacity to understand, protect and manage ocean resources and services.
I suggest that Canadians:
• Ensure that all levels of government mainstream the objective of assessing and managing climate-change impacts.
• Facilitate all other private and public institutions to similarly mainstream climate objectives.
• Help set and rapidly achieve aggressive targets for energy conversion and emissions reductions through behavioural incentives such as carbon pricing and others recommended in the report Acting on Climate Change: Solutions from Canadian Scholars, released in March.
Tom Okey is owner and president of Ocean Integrity Research, an adjunct professor at the University of Victoria and a director of the Tropical Conservation Consortium.
