Continuing in the “bad news for the worlds oceans” theme. Ecosystems along the continental shelf waters of the Northwest Atlantic Ocean–from the Labrador Sea south of Greenland all the way to North Carolina–are experiencing large, rapid changes, report oceanographers funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) in the Feb. 23, 2007, issue of the journal Science.

While some scientists have pointed to the decline of cod from overfishing as the main reason for the shifting ecosystems, the paper emphasizes that climate change is also playing a big role.

“It is becoming increasingly clear that Northwest Atlantic ecosystems are being affected by climate forcing from the bottom up and overfishing from the top down,” said Charles Greene, an oceanographer at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y, and lead author of the Science paper. “Predicting the fate of these ecosystems will be one of oceanography’s grand challenges for the 21st century.”

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