"With a sickening thud, another hefty and handsome salmon lands in the waste barrel, headed for the dogs.
More Alaskan salmon caught here end up in the dog pot these days, their orange-pink flesh fouled by disease that scientists have correlated with warmer water in the Yukon River.
The sorting of winners and losers at Moore's riverbank fish camp illustrates what scientists have been predicting will accompany global warming: Cold-temperature barriers are giving way, allowing parasites, bacteria and other disease-spreading organisms to move toward higher latitudes.
"Climate change isn't going to increase infectious diseases but change the disease landscape," said marine ecologist Kevin D. Lafferty, who studies parasites for the U.S. Geological Survey. "And some of these surprises are not going to be pretty."
Mary Ruckelshaus, a federal biologist with the Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Seattle, has been running climate models to peer into the future for Pacific Northwest salmon. Those models predict that salmon will become extinct without aggressive efforts to preserve the clear, cool streams needed for spawning, such as planting trees to shade streams and curtailing the amount of water siphoned off by farmers."It's sort of a time bomb," Ruckelshaus said. "If people don't have a plan for it, it can be disastrous when it hits." Her models didn't factor in the potential for emerging diseases, such as the one that Kocan, her former professor, has been studying."
It's the kind of redistribution of disease that can be expected with climate change, Kocan said: "Everything is getting warmer, and that's how climate change is going to redistribute all kinds of disease. Parasites have their optimum conditions -- upper and lower limits. We'll notice where they show up but not necessarily where they disappear."" LINK
More Alaskan salmon caught here end up in the dog pot these days, their orange-pink flesh fouled by disease that scientists have correlated with warmer water in the Yukon River.
The sorting of winners and losers at Moore's riverbank fish camp illustrates what scientists have been predicting will accompany global warming: Cold-temperature barriers are giving way, allowing parasites, bacteria and other disease-spreading organisms to move toward higher latitudes.
"Climate change isn't going to increase infectious diseases but change the disease landscape," said marine ecologist Kevin D. Lafferty, who studies parasites for the U.S. Geological Survey. "And some of these surprises are not going to be pretty."
Mary Ruckelshaus, a federal biologist with the Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Seattle, has been running climate models to peer into the future for Pacific Northwest salmon. Those models predict that salmon will become extinct without aggressive efforts to preserve the clear, cool streams needed for spawning, such as planting trees to shade streams and curtailing the amount of water siphoned off by farmers."It's sort of a time bomb," Ruckelshaus said. "If people don't have a plan for it, it can be disastrous when it hits." Her models didn't factor in the potential for emerging diseases, such as the one that Kocan, her former professor, has been studying."
It's the kind of redistribution of disease that can be expected with climate change, Kocan said: "Everything is getting warmer, and that's how climate change is going to redistribute all kinds of disease. Parasites have their optimum conditions -- upper and lower limits. We'll notice where they show up but not necessarily where they disappear."" LINK
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