Ocean warming is changing N.B.'s fishing grounds. Will fishermen adapt?

Fishing communities in southwestern New Brunswick are trying to figure out how to use a decade of alarming science reports to get ready for the future. 

While change in the oceans is constant, bells went off in August 2012 when the Gulf of Maine reported its warmest sea surface temperatures on record. 

By 2018, the Gulf was in a year-round heatwave, with temperatures higher than normal in almost every month. 

Three weeks ago, scientists published data from the warmest autumn since 1982. 

Between Sept. 1 and Nov. 30, the average sea surface temperature was 15.5 C. 

"That's three degrees Celsius or so above normal," said Dave Reidmiller, climate center director at the Gulf of Maine Institute. "That's not insignificant."

"You can think about the ocean broadly like a human body. We have a pretty stable temperature at which we operate well. When you get a fever of a couple of degrees, you start to feel achy. When it gets up into three, four, or five degrees, systems start to shut down."

Reidmiller said the Gulf has been warming faster than 99 per cent of the oceans in the world, partly because it's relatively shallow and it's being affected by changing ocean currents. 

"The Gulf Stream, historically, was like a jet set on a really tight powerful stream of heat and hot water coming up from the tropics. More recently, it has slowed down and become more diffuse, which has allowed some of that warm water to come over Georges Bank and in the Gulf," said Reidmiller. 

The Bay of Fundy is also being impacted. It extends north of the Gulf and shares a marine ecosystem. 

Data collected monthly from a monitoring station offshore from St. Andrews shows temperatures that are one to two degrees above normal, said David Hebert, a scientist with Fisheries and Oceans Canada. 

That's a departure, he said, from the gradual warming of about a tenth of a degree every 10 years over the past century. 

"It's a bit scary," he said. "I think it's going faster."

What's living in the water is also changing.