Last year the waters off the Florida coast were so warm that it was difficult for people to swim. This is the state, of course, where the governor has removed all references to climate change from state websites. Fish are migrating north, changing -- or threatening – the fishing industry, depending on your point of view.
The Mid-Atlantic Bight, a term meaning a long gradual bend in a shoreline that forms a large open bay, extends from Cape Hatteras to Cape Cod. Thanks to the climate crisis the cave person mentality says doesn’t exist, the Atlantic Ocean warming of 2 degrees F will disrupt more than commercial fishing.
Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s plan to eliminate agencies based on science, wants not only to dump NOAA but any agency that calls us to think. Commercial fishing may be happy with the volume of sea bass that have moved north due to warmer waters, but the fish are gobbling up crabs and lobsters. But they opposed wind farms off the Jersey Shore, and now we’ll all pay the price.
Prayer for the Day
Ah, O Lord, save us from little minds, denying reality,
For we know it is greed that opposes climate science;
Refusing to recognize what is before our eyes,
We continue to forge ahead, raping the earth and the seas.
Shake us loose from our lethargy and make us see
That our very action and inaction will corrupt our future.
In the name of the One who calls us to action,
Even Christ Jesus our Lord, Amen.
Thoughts for the Day
What (the fisheries) management cares about is the now. The next year, the next two years. And the problem is we don’t have really good forecasting models to predict ocean temperature change in the near term.
Vincent S. Saba, biologist, NOAA
Climate change is scrambling ocean life in many ways right now. It’s pushing fish and other marine life to new locations and driving them to disappear from places that we’ve relied on them for decades and centuries. All of this then affects our fisheries and affects our coastal economies and eventually the global supply chain.
Malin Pinsky, professor, Rutgers University
Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind:
Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?
Job 38: 1-2