"And the second angel sounded, and something like a great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea; and the third part of the sea became blood.
And the third part of the creatures which were in the sea, which had life, died, and the third part of the ships were destroyed..."
(Revelation 8, verses 8 and 9, after the Elberfeld Bible translation of 1905)
Note to this: This biblical text from the most recent book of the Bible was most likely written between the years 81-96 AD during the time of the Roman Emperor Domitian. If we look at the event described here as a gradual process, then the destruction of the ships could indicate that fishing boats will in future rot in the harbours for lack of catchable quantities of fish... Perhaps the last chapters of the New Testament should in future be interpreted much more ecologically than has been done in the past. And if the God of the Bible is indeed a loving God, then he will ultimately not punish human beings for their sacrilegious actions. No, he simply withdraws and leaves them to the consequences of their own actions... I wonder if they would then learn something from this?
There are warm times in the southern North Sea. Now, in 2020, the heat wave below sea level, which the majority of our population has never seen before, has reached a completely new quality for the first time. This is because the season known as "winter" from the days of the fathers has apparently been completely absent here since January 2020. On 10.Jan 2020, for example, the German Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency (BSH) reported a temperature of 10-11° Celsius off the East Frisian Islands.
Although the water temperatures near the coast were somewhat lower in the single-digit range, they were still so high that it was still possible to catch small sea creatures in the tidal flats with the frame landing net, which otherwise prefer to spend the winter in deeper water zones. And also the glass shrimps of the harbour sheet piles were still present. Since January 2020, state authorities should actually have had red warning lights shining all day long. And a monotonous, muffled howl of alarm should warn the general public of the impending climate disaster. But still nothing happens. When talking to employees of national park institutions, one hears remarks like: "It is not our job to make political statements. We only exhibit something here, and the visitor can then form his own opinion.” Great, I think. Because when I look at the aquaria of this "environmental exhibition", for example, I notice that although the well-groomed animals were carefully labelled. But that there's no indication of how they relate to the climate change. Moreover, the aquaria all look wonderfully tidy and clean, creating the illusion that you are looking at an ideal and intact environment. But that most of the animals shown here actually live on the seabed on a large garbage dump, which consists of PVC, PCB, net remains, car parts and other garbage, cannot be seen here. As an uncritical visitor of such an exhibition you go home and only think: "Oh great, everything is fine again in the North Sea, thanks to the National Park". Really? In this book, I'm going to point out some uncomfortable things. You'd better prepare yourself for something that may blow apart your former imaginations...
1983, Borkum: I, then 14 years old, got the chance of a lifetime: I was allowed to go out with a real professional fisherman. To catch shrimps! I remember how we lowered the net on 07.07.1983 at clear sight off the bird island Rottum. Two mighty beam trawls dragged evenly over the ground on each side of the ship. After an agonizing three quarters of an hour, the mighty beam trawls were caught by a winch. Full of joyful anticipation I hopped over the deck and - much to the annoyance of the fisherman - almost got the beam trawlers on my head. The net was full of true shrimps, also known and dealt as "crabs". Great pipefish and tub gurnards particularly fascinated me at that time. We also caught lots of flatfish of all sizes, various eels and soles, the latter two of which we boiled fresh on board. I have never eaten better fish! And today?
2003, Baltrum: A short holiday with the family. Recently, giant oysters have been appearing here in the waddens; occasionally on stones. It's April, the sun shines so much that the islanders have to turn on their sprinklers, because the grass on the island starts to wither. Furthermore, I find Pennant`s Swimming Crabs (Portumnus latipes), which had their origin off north-west African coasts, washed up on the beach. All females, that came to the southern North Sea to reproduce here...
2011, Norddeich: In the harbour basin small fishes swim on the surface, just about two centimetres long. An investigation shows that these are juvenile Sea Bass (Dicentrarchus labrax). Not a single flatfish can be caught with the landing net in the local tidal flats... The pier is covered with Pacific Giant Oysters (Magallana gigas). The once common Blue Mussels (Mytilus edulis) have become a scarce commodity here...
2012, Baltrum: It's midsummer in August. At high tide, anglers are still standing on the groynes. What they do catch here? Sea bass; the island record is something about 70 centimetres long...
2012, Norddeich: This time no sea bass in the harbour basin, but small flatfish in the waddens... At least; but only a few.
2013, Norddeich: With the bait sink net only little animals can be detected in the harbour basin. But also an imported shrimp from Korea, the Oriental Glass Shrimp, Palaemon macrodactylus.
2014, Norddeich: And again in April a shrimp trawler brings along egg-bearing females of the subtropical Arch Fronted Swimming Crab Liocarcinus navigator. The North Sea is too warm for the season. Summer?
Spring 2015 and 2016, Norddeich: The shrimp trawlers catch tope sharks, broadnosed skates, anchovies... All immigrants from the English Channel.
The Winter 2014/2015 was once again much too warm for our latitudes...
2017, Filthy weather in East Frisia: Not really a summer, it's constantly muggy or rainy, the farmers have many problems to be able to harvest anything at all... The by-catches of the fishermen are very different, certain otherwise common species are rare...
2018: Heat wave! Many otherwise common fish species were hardly caught by fishermen in summer. Because with a water temperature of 22° Celsius in the southern North Sea, they prefer to stay in deeper areas where no trawlers fish... In the Baltic Sea: 25° Celsius and vibrio alarm! In addition to this, one could observe more jellyfish than usual. Have they decimated the fish brood?
2019: Almost the same as 2017, only considerably warmer. In summer, the tub gurnards and other otherwise frequent by-catches are missing...
On 31.Dec 2019 it was still possible to catch true shrimps in the tidal flats of Neßmersiel. The North Sea is too warm. Winter? What is winter?
2020: January. Temperatures up to the double-digit range. Spring bloomers already have buds. There are already daisies... The season "winter" seems to be gone this year in East Frisia, Lower Saxony. The shrimp fishermen go out, although they usually take a winter break at this time of the year. And they bring unusual creatures into the harbour, which is evidence of unbelievable things. As we will see in the following... Some of these catches are inconspicuous and small, others are almost screamingly colourful. As if Mother Nature wanted to send us a brightly coloured warning before it's too late...
1. Temperatures in the North Sea (i.e. the German Bight) According to the Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency (BSH), the average water temperature of the North Sea in 2017 reached 10.9 degrees Celsius, only slightly below the 2016 value of 11.0 degrees. This was the second highest value since 1969, and only in 2014 was the water even warmer at 11.5 degrees Celsius. At the moment (January 2020) we have temperatures between 10 and 11 degrees Celsius in the southern North Sea off the East Frisian Islands... You can catch true shrimps in the waddens, which should actually be hibernating in deeper water layers... The "winter" season does not seem to be taking place in the southern North Sea at all at the moment...
2. On 18.01.2020 at the internet provider GMX it could be read that... ...a heat wave in the ocean caused a mass death off the American coast of the USA. Researchers from the United States called the stream of excessively warm seawater that stretched from Alaska to the Baja California a "blob".
This caused the death of several ten thousand of birds in the Pacific, but also millions of starfish. The warming of the sea water favoured the reproduction of viruses and epidemics, which are responsible for the death of these animals. Climate change could make such deadly heat waves in the sea more and more frequent. Incidentally, the seabirds simply starved to death because the warm seawater caused their otherwise abundant prey to disappear...
Scientists estimated the total number of dead seabirds at about one million...
They assumed that the "sea heat wave" had reduced the quantity and quality of the plankton, so that the number of fish living on it was greatly reduced.
In addition, the metabolism of fish in warmer water was said to have become faster. As a result, the predatory fish would have needed much more prey than usual due to the resulting higher energy conversion, thus further reducing the number of available prey fish for seabirds. In addition, other creatures had also been affected by the problem of ocean warming. Among others, "only" about 100 million cods have died. And many whales also suffered from the consequences of this dramatic ocean warming.
3.) Sea heat waves caused by a climate warming up These already existed in the Tasman Sea and in other regions, such as the Australian Barrier Reef or on the coasts of South America, where the phenomenon has been known for many years under the name El-Niño*.
In 2018, these phenomena could also be observed very clearly in the German North Sea and in the southern Baltic Sea... In summer 2018, the North Sea became 22° Celsius warm, while the southern Baltic Sea even reached temperatures of up to 25° Celsius. These were values as they are usually measured in the Mediterranean Sea...
4.) The warming up of the oceans is accelerating more and more...
Scientists have calculated that in 2019, the world's oceans will be warmer than at any time since the global survey began. They also warned in the journal "Advances in Atmospheric Sciences" that climate change is accelerating the warming up of the oceans. According to the report, the past ten years have seen the highest ocean temperatures since the 1950s, with the last five years also being the warmest. In 2019, the average sea temperature down to a depth of two kilometres would be about 0.075° Celsius above the average from 1981 to 2010.
5.) A preliminary review...
This enormous amount of energy in the form of heat emitted into the oceans by man over the past 25 years is equivalent to the energy discharge of 3.6
billion(!) atomic bomb explosions of the size of the atomic bomb, that was detonated over the Japanese city of Hiroshima during World War II.
*Spanish = the Christ Child. The phenomenon of the warming of the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Peru from 24° to 26° Celsius has been known for many years and occurs sporadically about every 4 to 5 years, but has increased in intensity significantly in recent years. This warming up destroys first the plankton and after that complete fish stocks...
This book, of course, makes no claim to complete scientific accuracy or a fact-oriented, all-encompassing truth. Rather, the author has attempted to assemble a picture from the very confusing puzzle pieces and fragments of shrimp trawler catches, his own observations and the messages of third parties. This picture is of course neither complete nor completely finished, because the puzzle pieces entrusted to the author are simply too few for this.
But even from the few pieces of the puzzle, valuable small pieces and aspects of a larger whole can already be recognized.
The author's horizon of observation extends, with interruptions, from the late 1970s and early 1980s until today.
Although these observations are largely based on a certain amount of subjectivity, they become more objective because it has been possible to shed some light on certain events through personal experiences and messages from third parties.
For example, some personal communications from the aquarium operators on the island of Borkum compensate somewhat for the "absences" of the author on this island, during which he could not be present there.
The author's collection, with which the discovery of certain animal species could be assigned to specific periods of time, also proved to be helpful in the creation of this work. Thus, for most of the hypotheses described here, there are real specimens that can be checked at any time. And so, in the meantime, about 500-600 jars with corresponding specimens have accumulated in the author's cellar. It should also be noted that the animals preserved here were not collected and killed just for collection purposes, as most scientists would do.
But more than 95% of these specimens are animals that were either collected dead between garbage and by-catch, or that were later placed in an aquarium.
So there was no overexploitation of the endangered fauna of the North Sea, just to extend a collection. But even if we were to look closely at all these collection specimens, even these would only represent a very small part of the creatures that actually exist in the southern North Sea. Because it is estimated that in the whole North Sea there are at least 7000 different species of animals, of which about 4000 live in the German Wadden Sea. And there are probably even considerably more species if one were to take into account species introduced from other continents, and if one were to include the world of microscopic marine organisms, which is left out here in this work.
In order to draw conclusions about climate change from marine organisms, several aspects must be considered in context.
For example, it is a very important premise to first determine which species originally dominated the habitats of the southern North Sea. Then a careful comparison over time can be made and finally, in the final step, new species can be identified. The respective sizes of the specimens found and the new frequencies of these species play a very important role.
And if one looks at different groups of animals, a quite objective pattern emerges, which clearly shows the warming processes in the southern North Sea along the coast and off the East Frisian Islands.
Above all, it is a question of an overall trend that clearly shows that the deniers of anthropogenic climate change must either be completely blind or deaf. Or even suffer from the worst failures of human nature: namely, stupidity, ignorance, consumerism, or selfishness. This book should help to show how far climate change has already come. And that it is by no means the crazy idea of left-wing eco-socialists or other environmental fanatics.
The truth can be denied, but its consequences will always catch up with its deniers and opponents. Some sooner, some later. In the end, the uncomfortable truth in this small tributary sea of the Atlantic will take its toll on all of us, whether we like it or not. The little colourful animals that have recently been romping in our waters should be better understood by us as a reminder from Mother Nature to all of our consumer behaviour. Because only if our philosophy of life and basic attitude change, we still have a future worth mentioning on this coast, which is still valuable for tourism...
Autochthonous animal and plant species are generally defined as those species that have been known for long periods of time from specific localities. Basically the term autochthonous means as much as native or long-established. Not all autochthonous species are threatened by climate change, because there are actually some species that benefit from a warming up of the North Sea. The benefit then lies in opening up new ecological niches through the disappearance of other species, better reproductive opportunities or improved food supply. The latter could, for example, be the result of a more abundant growth of phytoplankton or other marine algae as a result of longer growth periods. Because the warmer the ocean is, the faster the tiny planktonic algae can multiply through cell division. However, there are (still) a number of animal species living in the German Bight which belong to the boreal or subarctic faunal group. And these will either migrate into deeper, colder areas on the sea floor or towards the north. At a certain point of no return, they will simply stay completely away from the shallow waters of the German Wadden Sea, especially the southern North Sea.
Now, this may not have too drastic an impact at first, if only a few subarctic species such as the great spider crab or the hooknose get lost from the ecosystem of the German Wadden Sea. Other species with a higher temperature tolerance will certainly move in from the south and try replace them. But in the medium and long term, such creeping changes could very well cause major and dramatic collapses, for example in fisheries or in the feeding of migratory birds. A lack of faunal components automatically results in a different composition of the marine plankton, which could be decisive for the later number of useful fish in the sea and of nutrients for migratory birds in the tidal flats. This is because ecosystems are highly complex structures. The fate of herring and lobster is therefore already decided in the plankton, which can react very sensitively to changes in its environment, even at short notice...
A further problem of autochthonous species of the boreal climate zone is that they are adapted to very specific temperature ranges for the completion of their life cycles. In the North Sea, these are linked to specific localities, currents and seasons. If these parameters shift, the species affected may lose food sources or habitats. Or, in the worst case, the possibilities for reproduction of their species, which then leads to the extinction of the species. For example, some species are very dependent on certain sea temperatures, because oxygen levels and the thriving of broods depend on them. In March 2017, for example, there was a massive slump in smelt fishing in the Elbe estuary, and even in spring 2020 things looked bad for these once very common small coastal fish. In addition to the problem of water warming due to climate change, there was also sediment turbulence as a result of dredging and the extraction of cooling water for power plants, as well as the discharge of warm power plant waste water. It is also known from many fish species of the cold temperate faunal cycle that they require cold periods in winter to mature their gonads. If these are too short or do not take place at all, the species affected by them become infertile. In addition, the phenomenon that a warming up of the environment surrounding an organism accelerates its metabolism. This means that its metabolic processes now run faster and faster. The heart races, breathing becomes more hectic and the need for food increases rapidly. As a result, our autochthonous species can only adapt to an ever faster increasing climate change to a very limited extent, because either they collapse themselves or they are no longer able to produce healthy and viable offspring. It is already a de facto situation, that commercial fishing fleets have to travel more than 100 kilometres further north than before, to be able to fish significant quantities of cod and saithe. As these have already begun to migrate towards Norway and Iceland.
In 2009, the cod stocks in the North- and Baltic Sea had already collapsed.
And the same happened in 2009 in the southern North Sea with flatfish. At present (2020), plaice and sole are considered to be rather scarce in the southern North Sea...
Since its foundation in 1892, the Biological Institute on Heligoland has been measuring and documenting the water temperatures in the North Sea at different times of the year, from which an annual average value has always been obtained. The result of these measurements is clear: since the last 50 years alone, the North Sea has warmed up by about 1.7° Celsius. And since the beginning of these measurements more than 100 years ago, this value has probably even risen by 2° - 3° Celsius. Now one could argue that this is only a very small rise in temperature, hardly perceptible for a person bathing. But: