Disturbing changes happen in waters surrounding Bermuda, reveal researchers

Bermuda, a British island territory in the North Atlantic Ocean, has been witnessing significant changes in its surrounding waters, and researchers attribute these alterations to the impacts of climate change on oceans and marine life. Over the past 40 years, the Atlantic Ocean around Bermuda has been experiencing rising temperatures, decreasing oxygen levels, increasing salinity, and growing acidity, according to findings from the Bermuda Atlantic Time-series Study (BATS).

Researchers have been monitoring the waters around Bermuda since 1983, collecting monthly samples to study the physics, chemistry, and biology of the ocean’s depths and surface. The latest findings, published in Frontiers in Marine Science on December 8, highlight the changes in the water around the islands from the 1980s to the 2020s.

Professor Nicholas Bates, an ocean researcher at the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences and a professor in the School of Ocean Futures at Arizona State University, explained, “We show that the surface ocean in the subtropical North Atlantic Ocean has warmed by around 1°C over the past 40 years. Furthermore, the salinity of the ocean has increased, and it has lost oxygen. In addition, ocean acidity has increased from the 1980s to the 2020s.”

The researchers found that ocean surface temperatures have been increasing by approximately 0.24°C per decade since the 1980s at the BATS monitoring station, resulting in the ocean being around 1°C warmer now than four decades ago. Notably, ocean temperatures have risen more sharply in the last four years compared to previous decades. The surface water has also become more saline, and the data reveals a 6% decrease in oxygen available to aquatic organisms over the past 40 years.

Bates suggested that these changes are part of broader trends linked to atmospheric warming, noting that “the ocean ecosystem now lives in a different chemical environment than experienced a few decades ago.” The alterations in Bermuda’s waters underscore the ongoing impacts of climate change on marine ecosystems and highlight the urgency of addressing global warming.