Page 28 - atoday

A28 SCIENCE
Tuesday 24 January 2017

What can mackerel and a volcano say about climate change?

PATRICK WHITTLE scribed as the “Year With- thing seen today in places
Associated Press out a Summer.” such as Pakistan and Syria.
PORTLAND, Maine (AP) The researchers behind “Understanding how
— What could an Indo- the Science Advances ar- adaptive responses to ex-
nesian volcanic eruption, ticle found that alewives, treme events can trigger
a 200-year-old climate di- a fish used for everything unintended consequenc-
saster and a surge in the from fertilizer to food by es may advance long-
consumption of mackerel 19th-century New Eng- term planning for resilience
tell us about today’s era of landers, did not fare well. in an uncertain future,” the
global warming? But mackerel had better report states.
Quite a bit, researchers survival rates and became How fisheries in the devel-
say. a critical source of protein oping world will adapt to
A group of scientists and and jobs, Alexander said. future climate change is
academics with the Uni- As crops failed and famine an important contempo-
versity of Massachusetts began to spread, the little rary food security issue,
and other institutions fish emerged as a staff because fish are a vitally
made that assessment of life, the report states. important protein resource
while conducting research The shift marked the be- worldwide.
about a long-ago calam- ginning of the mackerel More than a billion of the
ity in New England that In this 1891 photo released by the National Oceanic and Atmo- fishery as a critical piece world’s poor obtain most
was caused by the erup- spheric Administration, Penobscot Bay fishermen clean mack- of New England’s marine of their animal protein
erel near their saltwater farm off the Maine coast.
tion of Mount Tambora Associated Press economy, and it remains from fish, and 800 mil-
half a world away in 1815. active today; Maine and lion depend on fisheries
A cooled climate led to ern era of climate change. The research group’s find- Massachusetts fishermen and aquaculture for liveli-
deaths of livestock and “How we respond to these ings were published this caught more than 8 million hoods, according to the
changed fish patterns in events is going to be criti- month in the journal Sci- pounds of Atlantic mack- nonprofit research group
New England, leaving cally important for how we ence Advances . erel in 2015. WorldFish.
many people dependent come out of this in the long They looked at what the It’s a scenario similar to The report illustrates how
on the mackerel, an edible term,” said Karen Alexan- catastrophic Tambora what parts of the develop- abrupt changes in climate
fish that was less affected der, the lead author of the eruption meant for the ing world are experiencing can have unexpected
than many animals. study and a research fel- Gulf of Maine and nearby today as climate change consequences long after
The researchers assert that low in environmental con- human food systems. affects food security. conditions moderate, said
bit of history gives clues servation. The eruption was one of The study states there is a Andy Pershing, chief scien-
about what food security “We can learn from the the most powerful in re- parallel between the need tific officer and ecosystem
could be like in the mod- past how people dealt corded history and was for immediate adaptation modeler for the Gulf of
with the unanticipated.” followed by a short time after Tambora and the Maine Research Institute in
of climate change — spe- challenges in coping with Portland.
cifically, global cooling — the climate-driven devas- “Good stewardship of our
and severe weather. Its tation caused by storms, natural resources can help
impact on weather, food floods and droughts to- buffer against some cli-
availability and human day. mate impacts. Unlike the
and animals deaths world- It notes that the loss of people in 1815, we have
wide has been studied ex- food staples due to cli- an idea of what’s com-
tensively. mate change caused ing, and we need to make
The year that followed the people in the northeastern sure we are prepared,” he
eruption, 1816, is often de- states to move — some- said.q