Climate Change Conference Studies Impacts On Fishing

Some scientists believe that climate change is having a significant impact on New Bedford's number one industry, commercial fishing.

Its thought that warmer water temperatures in the Atlantic is behind the drop off in cod stocks in the region, but Professor Kevin Stokesbury of the UMass School of Marine Science and Technology in New Bedford tells WBSM News, while cod is on the decline, other stocks are flourishing.

" The American lobster population is very strong now in the Gulf of Maine, the scallop population over the last ten years has been about eight billion scallops in the stock, now there's about 39 billion, so there's more scallops than we've ever seen or recorded before." says Stokesbury.

Stokesbury conceeds we still don't know how climate change is fully impacting the oceans, but its clear there is significant change. Stokesbury was one of the presenters Thursday at a two-day conference on climate change, sponsored by UMass Dartmouth and the Standard Times.

Educators, scientists, students and the general public are sitting in on the presentations.