00:37 The Octopus Population is Booming The world’s cephalopods are booming and scientists aren’t sure why.

From coral bleaching to acidification, climate change has been doing a number on the world’s oceans. One major example is the skyrocketing populations of cephalopods such as squid, octopus and cuttlefish.

In a study titled “Global Proliferation of Cephalopods,” researchers present the first evidence that cephalopods have been on the rise globally , which indicates that the invertebrates may have benefited from the changing ocean environment.

According to the Scientific American, the animals have been taking advantage of gaps created by both climate change and overfishing . As the demand for food increases worldwide, people have reached and surpassed the limits set for sustainable fishing, the report added.

Fishermen tend to seek out the top predators in the sea first, which consist of large sharks, tuna and whales, and then move on to medium-size fish like cod, hake and halibut, which usually live for a long time, but grow slowly. The Scientific American said this gives the cephalopods the upper hand because they grow quickly and typically live for only a year or two. They also produce lots of eggs, which have low mortality rates – another trait that allows them to quickly get used to changes in their environment.

(MORE: Famous Octopus Makes Great Escape From New Zealand Aquarium )

The researchers’ dataset included 35 species – 52 percent squid, 31 percent octopus and 17 percent cuttlefish – from all the major oceanic regions, according to the study. They discovered that the abundance of cephalopods has increased over the last six decades.

"From a squid's perspective, it is good news ," NOAA Fisheries National Systematics Laboratory Director Michael Vecchione told the Christian Science Monitor. But, "maybe not from a fish's perspective."

According to Vecchione, cephalopods are “really voracious predators” that have “a high metabolic rate, high growth rate and, as a result, they have a high requirement for food. So they eat a lot of stuff. If there are a lot of squids out there eating juvenile fishes, it could make it more difficult for the fish populations to recover.”

"Nature has a way of self-regulating," study lead author Zoë Doubleday told the Monitor. She added that "they're highly cannibalistic … so they might self-regulate by eating each other. That often happens when food is limited. They might crash just as much as they've increased.”

The increase in cephalopods may also be a sign of modification in other species.

"If we're seeing these changes in the cephalopods, it means something might be changing in the ocean,” said Doubleday.

"We're seeing a new world here, one we haven't seen before," University of California-Santa Barbara biology professor Ben Halpern told the Monitor. "Any time you push an ecosystem into a different state, there's greater uncertainty in how it will behave, and how it will respond to future changes. Frankly, I think that should make people really worried."

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