MARYLAND — What do you think of when you hear the words 'climate change'? Powerful hurricanes? Heat waves? Drought?
What about the ever-present Chesapeake Bay? Say what you want about climate change but experts who focus on the bay say it's here, and has its ups and downs.
Bruce Vogt is an Ecosystem Science Manager with National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Chesapeake Bay office. He studies the bay and sees the changes firsthand.
“We’re already seeing a number of climate change on the Chesapeake Bay. Things like sea level rise, increased temperatures, changes in the amount and intensity of precipitation we see at times,” says Vogt.
And those changes are transforming the environment, which is leading to changes in habitats in and around the Chesapeake Bay.
These changing habitats can then impact marine life like blue crabs and striped bass in different ways, as Vogt mentions.
“Striped bass are impacted because their spawning times might change. Blue crabs are impacted, they may grow differently, they may reproduce differently.”
But, as Vogt points out, it's not all bad.
“With increasing temperatures and warmer winters that means blue crabs might be up and around, be able to move around more, it might actually have greater success spawning and greater success with the tiny little crabs coming black into the bay and grow up to adult crabs.”
While rising sea temperatures may have a positive influence on blue crabs, things like ocean acidification, which is a decrease in the pH of seawater, and lower amounts of dissolved oxygen are still working against the blue crab.
A changing bay also means that new aquatic life could call the bay home, something that could both benefit and hurt us.
“There’s been reports that red drum are more prevalent in the bay at least in southern areas than they have been previously." "They really like blue crabs. They like to go into the marshes and into the eel grass and pick up crabs. So, that could be a new predator or increased predation of blue crabs that we haven’t had you know previously,” says Vogt.
Another aquatic creature that is making the bay home now is shrimp. The increasing shrimp numbers in the southern parts of the bay have sparked a new fishery, spurring new economic opportunities for the economy provided by the bay
This leads us to a double-edged sword for the bay economy as it is giving us a new opportunity but also making another one more scarce.
“So, it’s hard to say exactly how things are going to play out. We could see both positive impacts and negative impacts. So, that’s why it’s really important for us to understand what the changes are in how they’re impacting species now so that we can help predict how things may occur in the future and start adapting to it now,” says Vogt.
In an effort to better observe the bay, NOAA is adding three new buoy sensors to gather much more detailed data to better help understand what is changing in the bay, find ways to adapt and become resilient against climate change.
If you would like to read more on the blue crabs and how climate change could be impacting them, click here.
For more stories on ABC's special the Power of Water, click here.
