Looking at tomorrow...

in #nature4 years ago

Tomorrow morning I will participate in another beach sampling activity.
It has been beautiful and (very) hot weather, however tomorrow the weather is looking less. With winds affecting the waves and with that the catchability of our sampling net and possibly even some rain.

Owing to the heat in the last days, the expectation is that the beach water is pretty warm, most likely even to warm for the fish we're interested in (above there ecological threshold). So we are not expecting these kind of catches tomorrow:

IMG-20190518-WA0038_schol en grote_bot_transect_5.jpg

Theoretically in the last couple of years, the shallow coastal water has been for a couple of summer weeks too warm for the flatfish (plaice). An effect of the increasing global temperatures. So the fish should find other waters to survive or adopt to the heat. By sampling tomorrow we hope to be able to see if the fish are still in the too warm waters and in what physical condition they are. If not they might have moved to deeper waters and hopefully are able to survive there.

I'll provide an update later this week.