Dear MEL Topic Readers,
'Shrinking Nemo': Smaller clownfish sound alarm on ocean heat
Finding Nemo is a 2003 animated comedy-adventure movie by Disney about
a tropical clownfish that lives in the Great Barrier Reef. He embarks on a dangerous
journey to find his son after his son, Nemo, was captured by a diver and taken
to Sydney. 20 years after the movie production, ocean temperatures heated up and
caused a severe and widespread coral bleaching event. Recetnly, new research
found that clownfish living on coral reefs became shorter by several millimeters
during the heatwave while keeping the same weight. The researcher thinks the
clownfish made themselves smaller to survive with less food and oxygen. The
surprising finding could help explain the declining size of other fish in the
world’s oceans. Since clownfish live only for several years to ten years in the
wild, provided that they aren’t eaten by a larger fish, they seem to adjust
themselves to the changes in their environment quite fast.
Read the article and learn about shrinking clownfish in coral reefs.
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