Beneficiaries of Warmer Sea Waters

These gulls are gliding about over the bay, enjoy our highly unusual, balmy spring-like temperatures, but they reminded me of an article that I came across the other day. 

The article I read talked about Black-Backed Gulls, cousins to our local gulls. Black-Backed Gulls are native to the North Sea, and recent studies have shown that these gulls are booming. What's going on?

Sea temperatures in the North Sea are on the rise. 

The warmer waters have created an abundance of a new breed of swimming crab that is easily picked off by the hungry Black-Backed Gulls. Experts have identified this new warm water species as Henslow's swimming crab, Polybius henslowii.

These crabs spend more time swimming at the surface that any other species, and have  colonized the North Sea which has warmed by 1 degree Celsius since the mid 1980s. In Fahrenheit terms, 1º C equals 33º F. This alarming level of warming is four times faster than the global average.

A cascade of effects from one "small" change in just one ecosystem. The steady, unabated march of climate change almost assures us that the seas around us will continue to warm, and these warmer waters will in turn create their own domino effects on all of us.