Vibrio bacteria are usually found in warm waters, but new research has found them in the cold Baltic Sea as a result of rising temperatures. Controlling the spread will be hard.
A team of scientists from Britain, Finland, Spain and the United States says it has the first hard evidence to link rising ocean temperatures in Northern Europe with the emergence of various strains of Vibrio bacteria.
Vibrio bacteria are normally found in warm, tropical marine environments but have now been detected in the usually cold Baltic Sea.
They belong to a group of bacteria which – depending on the strain – can cause gastroenteritis or cholera in humans if raw or undercooked shellfish are consumed, or through exposure to contaminated seawater.
Published in the journal Nature Climate Change, the findings also suggest the warming patterns in the Baltic Sea are manmade.
Rising temperatures
The research focuses on sea surface temperature records and statistics of Vibrio cases. It shows the Baltic Sea warmed at a rate of 0.063 to 0.078 degrees Celsius from 1982 to 2010.
Read the whole story: DW
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