Study: Narragansett Bay temps reached record highs, lows last year

A GRAPH SHOWING WATER TEMPERATURE at Fox Island, off the Wickford Village coast in North Kingstown. / COURTESY URI/JEREMY COLLIE
A GRAPH SHOWING WATER TEMPERATURE at Fox Island, off the Wickford Village coast in North Kingstown. / COURTESY URI/JEREMY COLLIE

SOUTH KINGSTOWN – An oceanographer at the University of Rhode Island’s Graduate School of Oceanography said temperatures in Narragansett Bay hit record highs and lows in 2015.
Jeremy Collie said the temperatures represent the “most extreme” fluctuations observed since the school started surveying the waters 56 years ago.
“What really stands out with our findings is that we had extreme cold and extreme heat in the water temperature in 2015,” Collie said in a statement. “So even though the world is warming because of climate change, we’re still going to have these extremes.”
The findings came from GSO’s Narragansett Bay Fish Trawl, which is done to sample fish every week in the bay and track seasonal or annual changes of marine life. Water temperature also is recorded weekly at the same site off Wickford Village in North Kingstown. Collie has managed the trawl since 1998.
Collie said he has noticed temperatures steadily rise in the bay over the years, with a peak in 2012, the warmest year on record.
Here are some of last year’s temperature highlights:

  • Following a warm January in 2015, sea surface temperature plunged to 30 degrees Fahrenheit, with parts of Narragansett Bay freezing over. Record cold temperatures in February and March lasted until late April when the bay warmed rapidly, exceeding the seasonal average.
  • A hot summer followed the cold winter. In October, temperatures cooled toward the long-term average, but remained well above average during the last two months of the year, with some of the warmest temperatures on record – an average of 50 degrees – during November and December.

He said last year’s harsh winter benefited cold-water species like lobster and winter flounder, which spawn in winter to avoid predators killing their larvae. The fish trawl caught 57 lobsters in just one tow in the lower bay; the last time more than 50 lobsters were caught in one tow was in summer 2009.
The warmer ocean temperatures that followed brought in more warm-water species, including scup, butterfish and squid, and some of the warm-water species, such as menhaden, remained in the bay during the fall.

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