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Fevers are plaguing the oceans — and climate change is making them worse

Sudden marine heatwaves can devastate ecosystems, and scientists are scrambling to predict when they will strike.
  1. Giuliana Viglione

    1. Giuliana Viglione is a freelance journalist in Washington DC.

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Ten years ago, dead fish began washing ashore on the beaches of Western Australia. The culprit was a huge swathe of unusually warm water that ravaged kelp forests and scores of commercially important marine creatures, from abalone to scallops to lobster. Over the following weeks, some of Western Australia’s most lucrative fisheries came close to being wiped out. To this day, some of them have not recovered.

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Nature 593, 26-28 (2021)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-01142-4

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