New findings from the Marine Climate Change Impacts Partnership (MCCIP) highlight how 25 years of annual monitoring, backed by the long-running MarClim

New findings from the Marine Climate Change Impacts Partnership (MCCIP) highlight how 25 years of annual monitoring, backed by the long-running MarClim project are providing unprecedented insight…

MCCIP warns climate change is reshaping plankton communities, marine food webs and fish stocks across UK and Irish waters.

A new MCCIP study warns that shifting plankton communities in warming UK seas are reducing marine food web efficiency, threatening fisheries productivity and the ocean's capacity to store carbon. The ...

Plymouth Marine Laboratory conducts multidisciplinary research at the cutting edge of marine science to understand the complex marine environment and help solve the challenges it faces.

Climate change is damaging populations of tiny drifting plants and animals that feed the fish humans eat, according to marine scientists. Wildlife habitats in the open seas support these organisms – known as plankton – which form the foundation of marine ecosystems in UK waters, underpinning fisheries, food webs, biodiversity, and climate regulation. A new report by the the Marine Climate Change Impacts Partnership (MCCIP) has revealed that warming seas are driving major changes in plankton communities around the UK and Northeast Atlantic. Plankton are sensitive to environmental change, making them useful early warning indicators of climate impacts. For example, smaller plankton and microbial species are increasingly replacing larger, more nutritious plankton, changing the rate at which energy moves through marine food webs. This may increase the risk of mismatches between plankton availability and fish spawning, they said. The annual spring plankton bloom will begin earlier and last longer in some areas as sea temperatures rise. As plankton species’ populations shift further north as habitat conditions change, fish and other marine wildlife will follow, the scientists say. Warmer seas will become more ‘layered’, making it harder for nutrients from deeper waters to reach the ocean surface. This could reduce the...

University of Plymouth news: Our researchers have led the production of a new Marine Climate Change Impacts Partnership (MCCIP) report highlighting the...