{ "archive_path": "archive/1790460215.401886", "base_url": "gcaptain.com/how-europes-intensifying-marine-heatwaves-threaten-its-fisheries", "basename": "", "bookmarked_date": "2026-09-26 22:03", "canonical": { "archive_org_path": "https://web.archive.org/web/gcaptain.com/how-europes-intensifying-marine-heatwaves-threaten-its-fisheries", "dom_path": "output.html", "favicon_path": "favicon.ico", "git_path": "git/", "google_favicon_path": "https://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=gcaptain.com", "headers_path": "headers.json", "htmltotext_path": "htmltotext.txt", "index_path": "index.html", "media_path": "media/", "mercury_path": "mercury/content.html", "pdf_path": "output.pdf", "readability_path": "readability/content.html", "screenshot_path": "screenshot.png", "singlefile_path": "singlefile.html", "warc_path": "warc/", "wget_path": "gcaptain.com/how-europes-intensifying-marine-heatwaves-threaten-its-fisheries/index.html" }, "domain": "gcaptain.com", "extension": "", "hash": "1CXQ95DRTYPGTWV60DNX", "history": { "archive_org": [], "dom": [], "favicon": [ { "cmd": [ "curl", "--silent", "--location", "--compressed", "--max-time", "120", "--output", "favicon.ico", "--user-agent", "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/118.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 ArchiveBox/0.7.4 (+https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/) curl/curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "https://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=gcaptain.com" ], "cmd_version": "curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "end_ts": "2026-09-27T01:23:38.564003+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "favicon.ico", "pwd": "/data/archive/1790460215.401886", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-09-27T01:23:38.143834+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "git": [], "headers": [ { "cmd": [ "curl", "--silent", "--location", "--compressed", "--head", "--max-time", "120", "--user-agent", "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/118.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 ArchiveBox/0.7.4 (+https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/) curl/curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "https://gcaptain.com/how-europes-intensifying-marine-heatwaves-threaten-its-fisheries/" ], "cmd_version": "curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "end_ts": "2026-09-27T01:23:39.043720+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "headers.json", "pwd": "/data/archive/1790460215.401886", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-09-27T01:23:38.574414+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "htmltotext": [], "media": [], "mercury": [ { "cmd": [ "/app/node_modules/@postlight/parser/cli.js", "https://gcaptain.com/how-europes-intensifying-marine-heatwaves-threaten-its-fisheries/" ], "cmd_version": "1.0.0", "end_ts": "2026-09-27T01:23:58.746200+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "mercury", "pwd": "/data/archive/1790460215.401886", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-09-27T01:23:55.253178+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "pdf": [], "readability": [ { "cmd": [ "/app/node_modules/readability-extractor/readability-extractor", "/tmp/tmps5mi085u", "https://gcaptain.com/how-europes-intensifying-marine-heatwaves-threaten-its-fisheries/" ], "cmd_version": "0.0.11", "end_ts": "2026-09-27T01:23:55.241447+00:00", "index_texts": [ "By Ben Welsh, Simon Jessop and Kate Abnett\n\n\n\nLONDON, Sept 26 (Reuters)\u00a0\u2013\u00a0As drought spread and wildfires raged across Europe this summer, the extraordinary heat didn\u2019t stop at the shoreline.\n\n\n\nEuropean waters notched their hottest summer months since satellite sensors began providing reliable data in 1982, according to a Reuters analysis of temperatures recorded at the seas\u2019 surface.\n\n\n\nRecords fell from the English Channel to the Mediterranean Sea. An\u00a0offshore\u00a0buoy near Mallorca recorded a temperature of 33.02 degrees Celsius (91.44 degrees Fahrenheit) on August ?5, the\u00a0highest ever registered\u00a0in the Spanish\u00a0port\u00a0authority\u2019s buoy network.\n\n\n\nScientists warn that events like this year\u2019s\u00a0marine heatwaves\u00a0are becoming more frequent, more intense and more widespread as greenhouse-gas emissions drive up atmospheric temperatures around the globe. The world\u2019s oceans absorb the majority of the excess heat and retain it longer than the land or atmosphere.\n\n\n\nThat\u2019s transforming marine ecosystems, with catastrophic consequences for some European fisheries and the people who rely on them, according to a review of the scientific literature and interviews with more than a dozen researchers, fishing industry sources and analysts. Species that have sustained some coastal communities in Spain and southern England for generations are disappearing, as unfamiliar arrivals surge into newly hospitable waters.\n\n\n\n\u201cWhat is surprising is the speed at which this occurs,\u201d Jean-Pierre Gattuso, senior research scientist at France\u2019s National Centre for Scientific Research,\u00a0said of Europe\u2019s warming seas. \u201cRecords are broken almost every day in many places.\u201d\n\n\n\nTaken together, European seas averaged 21.6 C (70.9 F) between June and August, the highest in 45 years of available data.\n\n\n\nFew areas strayed further from the norm than the Bay of Biscay, off the Atlantic-facing coast of France and Spain.\n\n\n\nStretching from Cape Ortegal in Galicia to the Pointe de Penmarch in southern Brittany, the bay\u2019s traditionally cool waters averaged 21.4 C (70.5 F) between June and August, more than 2.4 degrees (4.4 degrees) above the 1991-2020 average. Readings from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration peaked on August 13 at 23.2 C (74 F), the highest of the satellite era.\n\n\n\nScientists define a marine heatwave as five or more days of water temperatures well above an area\u2019s historic norm. In the 1980s, the Bay of Biscay averaged a handful of heatwave days per year. By the end of August, it had logged 186 this year, more than three out of every four days, Reuters found.\n\n\n\nDISAPPEARING KELP, LOBSTER, CRAYFISH\n\n\n\nThe Bay of Biscay\u2019s cool waters, long prized by Spaniards seeking relief from the heat of the Mediterranean coast, were immortalized in Ernest Hemingway\u2019s 1926 novel \u201cThe Sun Also Rises.\u201d The book\u2019s protagonist recovers after weeks of dissolution on the northern beaches of San Sebastian.\n\n\n\n\u201cNow if you want to swim in cold water, you have to go to the westernmost\u00a0portion of Galicia,\u201d in the far northwestern corner of Spain, said Jose Manuel Rico Ordas, a professor of marine ecology at the University of Oviedo in the northern Asturias region.\n\n\n\nGalicia benefits from strong winds that push warm surface water away from the coast during the summer months, allowing cold, deep-sea water to take its place in a process known as upwelling.\n\n\n\nRico Ordas has been spending summers on the bay since he was a child and now studies its transformation.\n\n\n\nBack then, there were extensive underwater forests of kelp, which provide vital food, shelter and nurseries for dozens of species that sustain the region\u2019s small-scale fisheries. But he estimates roughly 95% of the large, brown seaweed stands have disappeared, based on sampling along the rugged Asturias coast since 2010. He attributes the decline primarily to climate change.\n\n\n\nKelp needs cold water \u2013 typically below 20 C (68 F) \u2013 to survive. Higher temperatures were once exceptionally rare in the bay, Rico Ordas told Reuters.\n\n\n\n\u201cNow, it\u2019s the opposite,\u201d he said.\n\n\n\nFish overgrazing \u2013 in particular by dreamfish, which thrive in warmer temperatures \u2013 has added to the kelp\u2019s decline, he said.\n\n\n\nThe impacts have been stark.\n\n\n\n\u201cWe are finding no more lobster, no more crayfish, no more sea urchins and many other species that are associated with the good status of kelp forests,\u201d Rico Ordas said.\n\n\n\nConcerned fishermen have been teaming up with scientists and environmental activists to try to restore kelp forests by planting seedlings grown in laboratories.\n\n\n\nManuel Angel Reiriz Gonzalez, president of a local fishermen\u2019s guild in Galicia, recently ferried members of one such project in a boat he uses for sport\u00a0fishing charters out of the\u00a0port\u00a0of Ribeira. The group brought a box full of small stones seeded with kelp, which they tossed into the choppy waters.\n\n\n\nClimate change threatens a way of life that has sustained Gonzalez\u2019s community for generations, he said. His family has been diving for sea urchins and harvesting clams for more than a century. But now, he said, recurring heatwaves are hurting shellfish stocks.\n\n\n\nThe area has also seen an influx of\u00a0Portuguese man o\u2019 war and trigger fish from warmer climes to the south \u2013 species that prey on local fish and crustaceans.\n\n\n\n\u201cWe had some very bad years for clam production, but we worked on seeding them, and the species gradually adapted,\u201d Gonzalez said.\n\n\n\nHe hopes the seabed restoration efforts can do the same for kelp forests.\n\n\n\nThe disappearance of kelp could lead to the decline of sea urchins and other species fishermen depend on, he said. \u201cAt that point, as a fishing guild, we would cease to exist.\u201d\n\n\n\n\u2018OCTOPUS APOCALYPSE\u2019\n\n\n\nIn other European waters, new, invasive species from the Red Sea and beyond are\u00a0entering the Mediterranean through the Suez Canal, displacing native populations, reshaping food chains and threatening fisheries, researchers say. In all, there are more than 1,000 non-indigenous ?species in the Mediterranean, according to a recent report\u00a0by the Cyprus Academy of Sciences, Letters and Arts, based on surveys by scientists in 11 countries.\n\n\n\nSome native species are coping with the warmer temperatures better than others.\n\n\n\nA massive swarm of\u00a0jellyfish shut down reactors\u00a0at France\u2019s Gravelines nuclear power plant in August when they clogged its cooling system \u2013 for the second time in as many years. The plant in northern France is cooled from a canal connected to the North Sea.\n\n\n\nFishermen on the south coast of England are reporting a surge in landings of common octopus. Around 2,600 metric tons were caught last year and upwards of 3,000 tons so far this year, according to figures compiled by the UK Marine Management Organisation. Before 2025, annual landings were less than 30 tons.\n\n\n\nOctopus larvae are carried into British waters on currents from breeding grounds near the Channel Islands, Brittany and places further south, said Bryce Stewart, senior research fellow at the Plymouth-based Marine Biological Association (MBA).\u00a0\n\n\n\nPreviously, many didn\u2019t survive the frigid temperatures. But since 2022, the English Channel has been under heatwave conditions for around six months out of the year on average, logging more than 900 days in all, the Reuters analysis found.\n\n\n\n\u201cNow they\u2019re actually breeding in UK water quite prolifically,\u201d Stewart said.\n\n\n\nFor Ian Perkes, owner of the eponymous fish merchants in the south Devon seaside town of Brixham, the octopus bloom has proved a boon.\n\n\n\nThere is a ready market in southern Europe for the once-rare species and no fishing quotas, he said. \u201cThere was one week where we had 200,000 kilos (200 tons).\u201d\n\n\n\nBut not everyone profits from the shellfish-loving octopuses, which feed on local lobsters, brown crabs and scallops.\n\n\n\nFor members of the South Devon and Channel Shellfishermen\u2019s cooperative, 2026 has been an \u201coctopus apocalypse,\u201d according to its executive officer, Beshlie Pool. One recent fishing trip yielded a single crab all day, she said.\n\n\n\nThe MBA estimates the octopus bloom could account for about \u00a310 million ($13.25 million) in lost shellfish catches against about \u00a312 million in octopus landings between January and September 2025.\n\n\n\nBut the benefits are not evenly distributed. Some shellfishermen have switched to catching octopuses, but many do not have the necessary equipment, Pool said. Four of the coop\u2019s 90-some vessels have gone out of business in the past 12 months.\n\n\n\nThe unpredictability of the changes makes it hard to adapt, Stewart added.\n\n\n\n\u201cWill the octopus still be here next year?\u201d he asked. \u201cIf they\u2019ve eaten all the crabs and lobsters, and the octopus die off, then what do we do?\u201d\n\n\n\n($1 = 0.7547 pounds)\n\n\n\n(Note: Sea-surface temperatures are based on data compiled by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the European Union\u2019s Copernicus Climate Change Service. Reporting by Ben Welsh in New York, Simon Jessop in London and Kate Abnett in Brussels; Additional reporting by Maria Alejandra Cardona in northern Spain, Marissa Davison in Plymouth, England, and Corina Pons in Madrid; Writing by Simon Jessop; Editing by Rachel Armstrong and Alexandra Zavis)\n\n\n\n(c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2026.\n\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t \n\n\n\t\tSubscribe for Daily Maritime Insights\n\t\tSign up for gCaptain\u2019s newsletter and never miss an update\n \u2014 trusted by our 107,339 members" ], "output": "readability", "pwd": "/data/archive/1790460215.401886", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-09-27T01:23:53.616207+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "screenshot": [], "singlefile": [], "title": [ { "cmd": [ "curl", "--silent", "--location", "--compressed", "--max-time", "120", "--user-agent", "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/118.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 ArchiveBox/0.7.4 (+https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/) curl/curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "https://gcaptain.com/how-europes-intensifying-marine-heatwaves-threaten-its-fisheries/" ], "cmd_version": "curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "end_ts": "2026-09-27T01:23:53.612131+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "How Europe's Intensifying Marine Heatwaves Threaten Its Fisheries", "pwd": "/data/archive/1790460215.401886", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-09-27T01:23:53.584606+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "wget": [ { "cmd": [ "wget", "--no-verbose", "--adjust-extension", "--convert-links", "--force-directories", "--span-hosts", "--no-parent", "-e", "robots=off", "--reject=js,mjs,woff,woff2,ttf,otf,eot,mp4,m4v,mov,webm,ogv,mkv,avi,flv", "--timeout=120", "--restrict-file-names=windows", "--page-requisites", "--user-agent=Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/118.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 ArchiveBox/0.7.4 (+https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/) wget/GNU Wget 1.21.3", "--compression=auto", "--timestamping", "https://gcaptain.com/how-europes-intensifying-marine-heatwaves-threaten-its-fisheries/" ], "cmd_version": "GNU Wget 1.21.3", "end_ts": "2026-09-27T01:23:53.569828+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "gcaptain.com/how-europes-intensifying-marine-heatwaves-threaten-its-fisheries/index.html", "pwd": "/data/archive/1790460215.401886", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-09-27T01:23:39.051981+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ] }, "icons": null, "is_archived": true, "is_static": false, "latest": { "archive_org": null, "dom": null, "favicon": "favicon.ico", "git": null, "media": null, "pdf": null, "screenshot": null, "singlefile": null, "title": "How Europe's Intensifying Marine Heatwaves Threaten Its Fisheries", "warc": null, "wget": "gcaptain.com/how-europes-intensifying-marine-heatwaves-threaten-its-fisheries/index.html" }, "link_dir": "/data/archive/1790460215.401886", "newest_archive_date": "2026-09-27T01:23:55.253178+00:00", "num_failures": 0, "num_outputs": 6, "oldest_archive_date": "2026-09-27T01:23:38.143834+00:00", "path": "/how-europes-intensifying-marine-heatwaves-threaten-its-fisheries/", "schema": "Link", "scheme": "https", "snapshot_id": "ae109a0c-cff4-4e00-92a3-766444ebd690", "sources": [ "/data/sources/1790460215-import.txt" ], "tags": ",pool,war-wiki,escalation", "tags_str": "pool,war-wiki,escalation", "timestamp": "1790460215.401886", "title": "How Europe's Intensifying Marine Heatwaves Threaten Its Fisheries", "updated": "2026-09-27T01:23:38.143291+00:00", "updated_date": "2026-09-27 01:23", "url": "https://gcaptain.com/how-europes-intensifying-marine-heatwaves-threaten-its-fisheries/" }