Their quick porpoising rolls indicated to me that they were feeding, perhaps on small juvenile fish. These were good-sized specimens, most about 21â'„2 to 3 feet long. I'd heard of longnose groups approaching 100-plus fish. I couldn't tell how many there were, seeing about 5 to 10 fish at a time.

Soon I realized they were longnose gar displaying group behavior common to this species. It was like missing the spot in the sky while trying to catch a bursting meteor during a Leonid shower.Ĭoncentrating on one spot and hoping for an encore was my best chance at a good look. Then more flashes-figures appearing in a split second and disappearing just as fast. I caught a sizable flash in my periphery. With midday sunlight directly overhead, viewing conditions were good to a couple of feet down, considering the turbid water. They have the highest biodiversity of any ecosystem globally, and support more than 500 million people worldwide, most of whom are in poor countries.Standing on the riprap above, I watched for signs of life in a channel separating a large backwater from the Illinois River. Warming of 2C is expected to essentially wipe out tropical corals reefs. Some of the most vulnerable ecosystems are the ones used to having a stable temperature year-round, such as species in the tropical oceans. That’s what really worries me – that unseen, silent dying.” But people generally don’t think about marine heatwaves. Heat stress causes dramatic die-offs, such as the 2021 “heat dome” along Canada’s Pacific coast, which killed an estimated 1 billion marine animals.ĭaniela Schmidt, professor of earth sciences at the University of Bristol, said: “We often think about impacts on ecosystems on land because it’s easy to see – the plants wilt and animals get too hot. The climate crisis doesn’t just increase atmospheric heatwaves but oceanic ones too, harming coastal communities and threatening another key food source for humans. Thousands of dead fish float in the Amshan River in Iraq in July in a disaster thought to be linked to drought.

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