Researchers at the Alfred Wegener Institute have found that jellyfish could benefit from climate change, potentially expanding their habitats due to warmer temperatures and other environmental changes. This shift could lead to an increase in jellyfish populations at the expense of fish-dominated ecosystems, particularly in the Arctic Ocean, signaling a significant transformation of marine food webs and impacting fish stocks crucial for commercial fishing.
Climate change is exerting immense pressure on many marine organisms. However, jellyfish across the world’s oceans may find an advantage in increasing water temperatures, particularly in the Arctic Ocean. Researchers at theto scenarios of rising temperatures, diminishing sea ice, and other shifting environmental conditions.
In the future, jellyfish and other gelatinous zooplankton could be some of the few organism groups to benefit from climate change. As numerous studies have confirmed, the transparent cnidarians, ctenophores, and pelagic tunicates thrive on rising water temperatures, but also on nutrient contamination and overfishing. When combined, these factors could produce a major shift in the ocean – from a productive, fish-dominated food web to a far less productive ocean full of jellyfish.
“These results clearly show how dramatically climate change could affect the ecosystems of the Arctic Ocean,” says AWI expert Dmitrii Pantiukhin. “The projected expansion of the jellyfish habitats could have tremendous, cascading impacts on the entire food web.”