Rough seas driven by strong winds, which scientists link to rising global temperatures, are increasingly common and treacherous, while warming waters are killing fish or causing them to migrate to cooler areas.

“In the end, fishermen will go further out to sea to cover the loss,” predicted Parid Ridwanuddin, campaign manager at the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (WALHI), an independent nonprofit.

“It is full of risks because the sea weather is often extreme. Many fishermen will become victims.”

More heat, more danger

Global temperatures have risen more than 1.2 degrees Celsius (2.2 Fahrenheit) since preindustrial times and are now swiftly approaching a 1.5C degrees of warming mark that scientists fear could herald a transition to far costlier and deadlier climate change impacts.

The 2015 Paris Agreement, a pact among almost 200 nations, set a goal of limiting global warming to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) while “pursuing efforts” for 1.5C.

But with fossil fuel use still rising globally, despite pledges to slash emissions, 1.5C of warming could be passed within a decade, top climate scientists say.

They fear that could trigger irreversible ecological tipping points, from surging sea levels as polar ice melts to spiking temperatures as methane - a potent driver of warming - escapes thawing permafrost.

A hotter planet is also expected to spark more extreme weather, crop failures, species extinctions, migration and soaring personal and financial losses for many people around the planet.

Indonesia’s government has predicted the country of more than 17,000 islands could suffer annual economic losses of nearly 115 trillion rupiah ($7.4 billion) by 2024 due to the effects of climate change, with 70 percent of those losses in the marine and coastal sector.

Along with driving increasingly hazardous extreme weather, global warming is also shrinking fish stocks around Indonesia, explained Yonvitner, a coastal and ocean resources expert at the IPB University in West Java.

As ocean water near the coast warms, fish - who thrive in certain temperature ranges - tend to migrate to cooler areas, while those who stay are less likely to reproduce, he said.

Yonvitner’s studies on mackerel, tuna and other commonly consumed fish over the past five years show that once ocean temperatures hit 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit), fish reproduction falls.

Indonesia does not collect comprehensive data on ocean temperatures, he said, but his research estimates temperatures in the waters around the island nation now spike above that threshold every three years before settling back down again to about 29 degrees Celsius.

“If these temperature rises continue, it will certainly threaten fish stocks in the future,” he said.

Read the full article about global warming from Thomas Reuters Foundation at Eco-Business.