Climate Change Isn’t So Bad For Sea Slugs

Photo credit: Wikimedia

We’re often reporting on the dangers of climate change and the effects of rising ocean acidity on animals, but when it comes to sea slugs, this story is a little different.

Ocean acidification is destroying corals and forcing dolphins to move out of their comfort zone, but not all ocean animals are feeling the heat.

Thanks to warmer temperatures off the coast of California, the bright pink sea slugs found in tide pools are booming!

The Hopkins Rose nudibranch are normally found in southern California waters, but are now showing up much further north, according to researchers from the California Academy of Science, UC Santa Barbara, UC San Diego and Bodega Marine Laboratory.

Video credit: Discovery News

This boom is not unexpected. In fact, researchers predicted it in 2011. “The Hopkins Rose nudibranch turns out to be a sort of canary in the coal mine for ocean temperature, because it grows quickly and has a lifespan of just a year, most of which is spent on small swath of the ocean floor,” Discovery News reports.

Curator of invertebrate zoology and geology at the CA Academy of Science, Terri Goslinger, says this beautiful consequence of warming waters could also be a bad sign. “Our current climate conditions are great for some of my favorite slugs, but we can’t ignore that warming seas mean less food for sea birds, and adverse impacts for all marine ecosystems. California’s unique marine life can’t always adapt to so much instability.”

Gosliner warned that increasingly frequent habitat disruptions could point to mass extinctions in the foreseeable future.

Read more from Discovery News.