Signals from the Sea: Lobsters, Kelp, and Right Whales—Oh My!

It’s easy to think of climate change as a simple story: rising temperatures and sea levels driven by human activity. But the reality is far more complex. Changes in the natural world are often uneven, unpredictable, and difficult to forecast.As oceanographer Nick Record explains in this episode, climate change unfolds in “fits and spurts” rather than in a smooth, linear trend. That complexity is part of what makes it so challenging to fully understand.In this episode, we make sense of that complexity through a case study in the Gulf of Maine. Nick, alongside his longtime friend and industry collaborator, lobsterman and marine biologist Curt Brown, shows how signals of a shifting climate appear in unexpected ways: in the feeding grounds of endangered right whales, in sudden changes in water salinity, in the loss of cold-water kelp forests, and in the lobster traps that Curt and other harvesters pull from the depths of the ocean.Together, their perspectives highlight how science and on-the-water experience work hand in hand to better understand a changing ocean.Links:Make Science Make Sense PodcastPaper Discussed: Early Warning of a Cold Wave in the Gulf of MaineBigelow Laboratory for Ocean SciencesNERACOOS Mariners Dashboard