With waters at 32C, Mediterranean tropicalization shifts into high gear

Summary

Marine biologists say warming is particularly acute in the eastern Mediterranean but could spread north and west. When Murat Draman went scuba diving off the coast of the southern Turkish province of Antalya and saw the temperature in the depths was pushing 30C, it didn't surprise him. "We were at a depth of 30 meters (100 feet) this morning and the water was 29C," said Draman, a diving instructor in an area which is experiencing firsthand the rapid "tropicalization" of the Mediterranean Sea. Encouraged by increasingly warm waters, hundreds of species native to the Red Sea have moved through the Suez Canal and into the eastern Mediterranean, disrupting ecosystems, scientists say. The threat is facing the entire Mediterranean, one of the fastest-warming seas, which this year saw its hottest June and July on record, figures from the Mercator Ocean International research center show. Draman, who remembers when the water temperatures were 25C in August in the early 2000s, said he had seen dozens of Red Sea species colonizing the clear waters of Antalya, where surface temperatures reached nearly 32C this week. The striking but highly venomous lionfish (Pterois miles) with its long spotted fins that measure around 26 centimeters (10 inches), is now at home in such warm temperatures and wreaking havoc in the local ecosystem. "About a decade ago, we saw one or two of them. Now we're talking about 15 or 20 per dive—even more than when we go to the Red Sea," Draman told AFP. "They are big predators. Small fish like gobies suffer a lot, we hardly see them anymore. Lionfish are normally found in the Red Sea but have increasingly been seen in the Mediterranean due to rising sea temperatures. 'A warning' Such invasive species are disrupting ecosystems across the eastern Mediterranean, the warmest area of the sea and the area that is heating up fastest, explained Professor Gil Rilov, a researcher at the Israel Oceanographic and Limnological Research institute (IOLR), who also lect...