Abstract
Climate change is predicted to have profound consequences for marine ecosystems. Due to the growing political and social drive to address its impacts, monitoring and mitigating climate change is a priority in marine policy in the UK. Cetaceans have been proposed as informative sentinel species for monitoring ocean health. Here, strandings data from four UK cetacean species were assessed for their use as a tool to aid policy makers monitoring climate change in marine environments. Data on stranded cetaceans were collected from 1990 to 2018 and differences in the proportions of stranded cold water adapted and warm water adapted species assessed using Generalised Linear Models (GLM), with 6-year periods and four regions of the UK included as explanatory variables. This modelling approach showed an increase in the proportion of stranded warm water adapted species over time across the UK and that differences in proportion of strandings between cold water and warm water adapted species can be detected between regions and 6-year periods, chosen as metrics to coordinate with reporting cycles for policy assessment needs. As such, these results show the potential for utilising strandings data to identify changing oceanic trends at the appropriate spatial and temporal scales for policy reporting in the UK. However, development of these analyses with a more detailed examination of these data at a finer resolution, incorporating other data sources, such as distribution trends and dietary stable isotope data, may be required before it is applicable as an indicator for trends in changes in climate.
Highlights
Unless there is an imminent and profound reduction in global carbon emissions, models suggest a unidirectional progress to a warmer earth, with mean sea surface temperatures projected to increase by 0.035 ◦C per year and warm an additional 2.8 ◦C by 2100 [1,2]
This study shows that cetacean strandings data has the potential to be a useful surveillance tool for monitoring changing marine ecosystems for policy makers, government agencies and advisors such as for the 25 Year Environment Plan, Marine Strategy Framework Directive and OSPAR assessments
This is the first investigation into the use of UK cetacean strandings data as a tool to aid policy makers with the development of climate change monitoring
Summary
Unless there is an imminent and profound reduction in global carbon emissions, models suggest a unidirectional progress to a warmer earth, with mean sea surface temperatures projected to increase by 0.035 ◦C per year and warm an additional 2.8 ◦C by 2100 [1,2]. Climate driven changes to marine ecosystems, such as warming oceans, increased ocean acidification, decreased oxygen levels and altered patterns of ocean circulation [4,5,6], are on course to even tually push regional environmental variables beyond the range of nat ural tolerances for marine life [3]. This may have consequences for the majority of marine organisms as changes in ocean temperature and chemistry could lead to altered behaviour, distribution, physiological functioning, population dynamics and demographic parameters, with a subsequent impact on wider ecosystem functions [4]. In line with these plans, the UK has domestic and European level policy commitments, such as the 25 Year Environ ment Plan and Marine Strategy Framework Directive respectively, to monitor and mitigate climate change in the marine environment
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