In a paper published today in Current Biology, researchers from the California Academy of Sciences Hope for Reefs initiative, along with Brazilian collaborators from the University of São Paulo, Federal University of Espírito Santo, and the Instituto Nacional da Mata Atlântica, show that mesophotic coral reefs function much differently than their shallower counterparts and are unlikely to offer a refuge for shallow water fishes trying to escape climate-change driven warming on the ocean’s surface.
In a paper published today in Current Biology, researchers from the California Academy of Sciences Hope for Reefs initiative, along with Brazilian collaborators from the University of São Paulo, Federal University of Espírito Santo, and the Instituto Nacional da Mata Atlântica, show that mesophotic coral reefs function much differently than their shallower counterparts and are unlikely to offer a refuge for shallow water fishes trying to escape climate-change driven warming on the ocean’s surface.
The research is based on hundreds of dives totaling more than a thousand hours underwater at sites across the Pacific and the Atlantic, with researchers collecting an unprecedented amount of data on what species occur on coral reefs at a range of depths, from the shallows to the low-light mesophotic zone between 100 and 500 feet (30 to 150 meters) beneath the surface.
“Our findings reinforce that mesophotic ecosystems are not necessarily a refuge for shallow fishes fleeing warming waters,” says Academy Curator of Ichthyology and Co-director of Hope for Reefs Luiz Rocha, PhD, the senior author of the paper. “These deeper reefs appear to be saturated, meaning that most niches where newly arrived species might survive are already filled by species that evolved under the distinct environmental conditions found at depth.”
Read more at California Academy of Sciences
Photo Credit: joakant via Pixabay
