A newly published study revealed that the rising temperature in the world's oceans is driving fishes to seek cooler habitats.

According to the study, climate change and global warming will lead to the massive disappearance of fishes from tropical waters in the course of the next 35 years.

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The study was conducted by William Cheung, associate professor at the UBC Fisheries Center and Miranda Jones, of the United Nations Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Center, who used similar climate change scenarios with what the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change used to forecast the effects of global warming on marine biodiversity.

The study showed that if the ocean temperature were to increase by one degree Celsius by 2100, schools of fishes could move towards cooler places at a rate of 15 kilometers for every 10 years.

However, the study also revealed that the fishes will flee from their habitats by 25 kilometers per decade if the Earth's oceans were to get warmer by three degree Celsius by 2100.

Cheung and Jones focused their research on more than 800 species of fishes and invertebrates which are often harvested for food, such as cod, tuna, halibut and herring.

The study concluded that the fishes whose habitat is in the tropical oceans will tend to flee to the North or South Pole.

In an issue of the ICES Journal of Marine Science published on October 10, the researchers wrote that the "results revealed that the species and species distribution models (SDMs) will move poleward at an average  rate of 15.5 and 25.6 km per decade for a low and high emissions climate change scenario, respectively.

In addition, the researchers wrote that the fishes were leaving the equatorial region and were travelling towards the latitudinal poles.

Because of the expected movement of fishes, Cheung said that "the tropics will be the overall losers," since people in the tropical regions  have a great dependence on fish for food and livelihood.

Tagsglobal warming, north pole, south pole, tropics, polar migration