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Warmer seas could help sharks
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Australian nurse sharks could gain from global warming, say researchers.
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Populations of the shark in eastern and western coastal areas are separated by cold waters in between, because the creature is particularly sensitive to water temperature. It cannot, therefore, migrate around the whole country.
However, if climate change were to raise average temperatures, the two groups of nurse sharks, which are thought to have remained largely separate for up to 10,000 years, would be able to mingle and reproduce, boosting the ability of the species to breed and survive.
Associate Professor Corey Bradshaw, of the University of Adelaide, said that the sharks 'really don't often go through the Bass Strait, and if they do it's never been recorded'. However, he said that global warming expected over the next 50-70 years was 'probably one of those one-in-a-hundred examples where climate change may actually be somewhat beneficial for this particular species'.
But the fishing threat which keeps the nurse shark on the IUCN's Red List of species vulnerable to extinction would remain. 'Climate change isn't going to solve the problems. All it does is give us a bit longer of a window to do something positive,' said Professor Bradshaw.
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