A decade ago, Tunisian fisherman Ahmed Chelli’s nets were bulging with fish and octopus that he sold at the Kerkennah islands’ local market. Today, he only finds “ISIS” — the term locals have given to the blue crabs that have overrun their fishing grounds in the Mediterranean’s rapidly rising seas.
“Instead of finding fish to provide an income, the fisherman finds something that cuts his nets,’ Chelli grumbled.
This summer, a maritime heatwave heated the seas of the western Mediterranean for more than 70 days.
The western half of the basin had the worst heat wave in four decades, according to marine scientist Joaquim Garrabou of Spain’s Institute of Marine Sciences, who monitors temperature gauges in the sea’s near-coastal waters.
Temperatures rose higher, and the heatwave lasted longer, than any other to hit the waters west of Sicily since records began in 1982, according to Garrabou, who shared preliminary findings from his analysis with Reuters exclusively.
‘We’ve seen marine heatwaves over the last 20 years,’ said Garrabou, who also serves as the coordinator of the T-MEDNet marine monitoring network. He and his colleagues discovered that since 2015, roughly half of the worst heatwaves on record in the entire basin have occurred.
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