The warming of the world's oceans could help spread serious illness and may cost millions of dollars in health care, new research says.

The Associated Press reports that a paper released on Tuesday, the product of a collaboration of 17 European marine institutes collectively called Project CLAMER, says that the rising temperature of ocean water is causing a proliferation of the Vibrio genus of bacteria, which can cause food poisoning, serious gastroenteritis, septicemia and cholera.

"Millions of euros in health costs may result from human consumption of contaminated seafood, ingestion of waterborne pathogens, and, to a lesser degree, though direct occupational or recreational exposure to marine disease," says the paper. "Climatic conditions are playing an increasingly important role in the transmission of these diseases."

The 200-page paper – a synthesis of the findings of more than 100 projects funded by the EU since 1998 – also describes various other effects of ocean warming, both documented and forecast, including melting ice, rising sea levels, coastal erosion, increased storm intensity and frequency, along with chemical changes in the sea itself, including acidification and deoxygenation.

"What was striking to me was the enormous pile of evidence that things are already happening," Katja Philippart, a marine scientist at the Royal Netherlands Institute of Sea Research who was involved in the study, told The Associated Press. "There is so much happening already. We are just in the midst of it."

And Carlo Heip, director of the Netherlands institute, says the biggest surprise revealed by the research is that things are changing much more rapidly than was thought was possible.

Heip says that in just a few decades, the fish population of the North Sea has changed significantly, with larger species moving toward the arctic and smaller ones taking their place.

He says the concentration of Vibrio genus of bacteria has been observed since the 1960s. "When the temperature in the North Sea began to increase at the end of the 80s, the Vibrios began to increase. One of those Vibrios is the cholera species."

Project CLAMER is holding a conference in Brussels on Wednesday and Thursday.