Dora
RebeccaAbout 50 new plant and animal species have been found in the Adriatic Sea over the past few years. This is due to global warming and more traffic in the sea.
The Adriatic Sea is warming up, so new organisms are appearing – mainly fish, plankton, and algae.
These new organisms may threaten domestic fish.
Some of them are even dangerous for humans, for example the poisonous reef stonefish and the red lionfish.
The increasingly warmer sea not only suits foreign fish, but also some crabs.
The Atlantic blue crab is a non-native species that flooded the Italian sea last summer. This year they were also found off the Slovenian coast.
In the summer, 278 blue crabs were caught in the Strunjan Landscape Park. Among them were several females carrying eggs.
Although they are not dangerous to humans, they are harmful to the ecosystem. They reproduce extremely quickly, as they have no predators in our area.
The Italian government, therefore, allocated almost three million euros to protect sea fish farms from them and appointed a special commissioner to fight them.
In the autumn a gilled snail was found in the Slovene Adriatic Sea for the first time! It surprised researchers because this was his second find in the Mediterranean Sea.
This species comes from the Indian Ocean, so it is considered non-native in the Mediterranean. Some believe that it came on ships.
There are probably more snails in the Adriatic, but they are nocturnal, so we often do not see them.
Glossary
The Adriatic Sea is the sea between the Apennine and Balkan peninsulas. It also includes the Slovenian and Croatian Sea.
The Mediterranean Sea is the sea between Europe, Africa and Asia. It includes the Tyrrhenian, Adriatic, Aegean, and Ionian seas as well as Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, Crete, Malta, and Cyprus.
Threaten means to be likely to cause harm or damage to something or someone.
Domestic means from a particular country; not foreign or international.
Points to Consider
- What is a non-native species?
- What is the difference between a non-native and an invasive species?
- Which group of animals do crabs belong to?
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The original version of this article was published on 22nd August.
Urban
Mateja
