Patch of Tasman sea expected to warm over spring and summer to temperatures that risk significant losses to sea life
Australia’s south-east could be in for a marine heatwave that is literally off the scale, raising the prospect of significant losses in fishing and aquaculture.
The Bureau of Meteorology has forecast a patch of the Tasman Sea off Tasmania and Victoria could be at least 2.5C above average from September to February, and it could get hotter.
Oceanographer Grant Smith said the colour-coded scale the bureau uses to map forecast sea surface temperature anomalies stops at 2.5C.
“We didn’t account for anomalies that high when we developed this … it could be 3C, it could be 3.5C, but we can’t see how high it goes,” he said.
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