Home to rare whales and most of the US lobster fishery, New England waters posted the second-warmest year on record last year.
The Gulf of Maine, a body of water the size of Indiana that touches Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Canada, is warming faster than the vast majority of the world’s oceans. Last year failed to set a new high for the warmest year by less than half a degree Fahrenheit, said scientists at the Maine Gulf Research Institute, a science center in Portland.
The average sea surface temperature was 53.66 degrees, more than 3.7 degrees above the 40-year average, the scientists said. Accelerated warming is changing an ecosystem that is home to numerous important commercial fisheries, especially lobster, they said.
One implication is that warming is driving species more associated with southern waters into the Gulf of Maine and altering their food chain, said Janet Duffy-Anderson, the institute’s chief science officer.
“Who will be the emerging species and who will be the declining species is largely a function of those interactions,” Duffy-Anderson said. “At the moment, we are not in a period of stability.”
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The gulf is the nerve center of the lobster fishing business, which has recorded strong catches in the last 10 years. However, lobster fisheries in waters further south have collapsed, and scientists have blamed warming temperatures.
The Gulf of Maine is also a key area for marine mammals, such as the North Atlantic right whale, which numbers only about 340, and seabirds such as Atlantic puffins. Those species and many others are threatened by interruptions to their food supply due to warming waters.
Lobstermen work at dawn on September 8, 2022 off Kennebunkport, Maine. New England waters recorded the second-warmest one-year temperatures in recorded history in 2022. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty, File)
Environmental factors accompanying high temperatures in the Gulf of Maine include persistent and intense heat waves, according to a report released Wednesday by the Gulf of Maine Research Institute.
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The warming also comes at a time when the world’s oceans are warming. Last year was the third warmest year for global sea surface temperature, according to the report.
“What is being seen in the Gulf of Maine (and in other parts of the world), however, is a loss of that balance: Larger fractions of the past few years are experiencing above-average temperatures and cold spells are are becoming increasingly rare,” the report said.
The hottest year in the Gulf of Maine was 2021, when the annual average sea surface temperature was just over 54 degrees. Last year was a fraction of a percentage point warmer than the third warmest year, which was 2012.
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Those three years are the only ones in recorded history in which the gulf’s average temperature exceeded 53 degrees.
The report states that other data also paints a picture of the Gulf of Maine as the site of prolonged warming. In nine of the 12 months of the year, the average monthly sea surface temperature was among the three warmest of all years on record, according to the report. November and December set new records for the highest monthly average sea surface temperature in the gulf, it said.
