For eastern Australia, temperatures are as much as 3 degrees warmer than in the past, means arrival of new species with unpredictable impacts…While some species can adapt by migrating to cool waters, eventually they run out of continental shelf…while spiny sea-urchins are grazing their way south with devastating effects on kelp forests off the Tasmanian coast…So-called foundation species, the kelp forests are home and food for commercially fished species such as abalone and lobster. The sea-urchins over-graze, turning the kelp into barren ground and then “you lose everything else”, Dr Verges said…”At some point they can’t move further south, there’s no land,” said Adriana Verges, a marine ecologist at University of NSW. “It’s like they’re falling off a cliff edge”
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