New 'NOVA' Dives into an American Body of Water Warming 99% Faster Than the Global Ocean

Sea Change: The Gulf of Maine airs Wednesdays beginning July 24 at 9:00 pm and is available to stream.

There’s a body of water right off the coast of New England that’s warming 99% faster than the global ocean, causing rapid changes that affect not just the organisms that live in the waters but also the fishermen and other coastal people who rely on them. The new three-part NOVA series Sea Change: The Gulf of Maine dives into those waters to show the effect of warming oceans as a result of climate change.

We spoke about Sea Change with Brian Skerry, a producer of the series and acclaimed underwater photographer who has shot stories for National Geographic for 26 years.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

What was the origin of this project?

The backstory is that I'm a diver, underwater photographer, and filmmaker. I grew up in Massachusetts; I now live in Maine. I began diving back in 1977, 1978. The waters that I began diving in and still occasionally dive today are all part of the Gulf of Maine, which is this temperate body of water that stretches from Cape Cod, Massachusetts, all the way up through Nova Scotia, Canada.

I wanted to do a story about the Gulf of Maine because it's my home waters, but it has also been identified as the epicenter of global ocean climate change: it's warming 99% faster than the rest of the global ocean. I thought now might be the time to really shine a light on what's happening there as a way of looking at the global planet.

What makes the Gulf of Maine special?

I’ve always been drawn to temperate waters. I’ve gotten to dive in some of the most extraordinary places on the planet, but there’s really something about temperate waters. They tend to be some of the richest, most dynamic places on the planet. The visibility is usually not great, because there’s so much nutrients, and those lead to an explosion of life. You see kelp forest and you see lots of colorful invertebrates and you see whales and you see sharks. In a place like the Gulf of Maine, the biggest animal, the North Atlantic right whale, and one of the smallest animals, baby lobsters, both eat the same thing, these little zooplankton called copepods. Even though it’s more difficult and challenging to photograph or film in those kinds of conditions, there are wonderful stories in these places, and they help people understand why our ocean planet is so magical.

We very much live on an ocean planet. If you look at Earth from space, you can see it's mostly water. About 72% of Earth's surface is ocean, and 98% of Earth's biosphere, where life can exist, is ocean. Every other breath that a human being takes comes from the sea. It is the greatest carbon sink on Earth. It takes in more carbon and gives us back more oxygen. Even if you don't care about the ocean, you are directly connected to it. And the health of the ocean determines the health of everything on this planet, including humans. 

I still think a lot of folks in this country and around the world think that climate change is something that's happening elsewhere, not in my backyard. The Gulf of Maine shows that it’s not something distant, and it has direct consequences on our lives. 

Is there a particular story from this series that really sticks with you?

One that is heartbreaking is about terns. These are birds that migrate thousands of miles and they stop in the Gulf of Maine on this little island where they nest in the summer. Historically they feed their chicks these silver-colored, slender-bodied fish, like herring or sand lance or whiting, that are easy for the little baby birds to swallow.

But as climate change has increased the seawater temperatures, those native fish are less abundant. Instead, we're getting an invasive species known as butterfish, which are silver, but they are wide-bodied. The parent terns go out foraging to find food for their chicks, and they see a silver school of fish near the surface. They dive down, they grab one of these, they fly back, they give it to their chick. But the chick can't swallow a butterfish because it's too wide. It's heartbreaking, because they end up spitting it out.

The mortality rate of those checks is increasing on the years when the water temperature really spikes and those butterfish are more plentiful and the native species are not. I think those kinds of visuals really don't need much of an explanation. Somebody can see that and just say, ‘Okay, that's what climate change means. It means that the baby birds are all going to die.’ You hope that they can extrapolate and connect the dots and what that means for them. If the oceans are dying, it means we're in trouble, too.

In your decades diving in the Gulf of Maine, have changes due to climate change been obvious?

The easternmost town in the United States, Eastport, Maine, has 30-foot tides, so there’s an exchange of nutrients every six hours that is unique. I used to go up there a couple of times a year, and there were places I could just walk in off a beach, I didn't even need a boat. And it was like going into an aquarium or a jewelry store. There was just color everywhere. I did two trips there in the last four years on this project, and it was like a ghost town. I walked into these places and it was hardly anything, it was just mud. The water was noticeably warmer to me. It was heartbreaking, because I remember this not that long ago being like an aquarium. And I found that in a lot of places.

People think climate change is moving slowly: ‘Oh, that will happen in 50 years, 100 years.’ No, no, it’s happening fast.