Adaptation of Fishing Communities to Climate-Driven Shifts in Target Species

Abstract

Climate change is causing shifts in marine species' distributions, disrupting fishers and fishing communities and threatening food security. These changes affect all fishing activities, from small-scale to industrial fishing, and have implications for livelihoods, economies, and society along the entire seafood supply chain. Understanding fisheries as social-ecological systems (SESs) that include dynamic responses and feedbacks for the targeted stocks, the fishers, and the fishing industry provides an essential standpoint for thinking about fisheries' adaptation to climate change. In this Perspective, we briefly summarize the ecological and socioeconomic impacts of target species' distribution shifts. We propose using a resilience perspective where fishery SESs can respond to climate changes by maintaining, coping, adapting, and/or transforming the system. In this context, we identify what specific actions by individuals, groups, and institutions allow the fishery system to respond in these ways and discuss policy solutions to allow for adaptation and transformation to shifting species distributions. ll

Climate change vulnerability assessment of the main marine commercial fish and invertebrates of Portugal

“…This metric is of special interest to fisher communities by identifying the resources with higher potential for climate-driven distribution shifts. The displacement of species to higher latitudes due to warming poses a challenge for small scale fisheries, as it would require adaptations that could be expensive or technologically complex for the fleet in its current state 63 . In our study, the species identified as very high potential for distribution change are of great economic relevance (Fig.…”

European cephalopods distribution under climate-change scenarios

“…We provided spatially explicit projections of both contemporary and climate induced distribution throughout the twenty-first century—that we encourage to complement with habitat, ecosystem and socio-economic models—to anticipate medium- to long-term management and conservation challenges (e.g. geographical redefinition of the stocks, adaptation of fishing grounds and targets) 34 , 102 .…”

Fish catch management strategies: Evaluating the interplay between body size and global warming

“…On the other hand, latitudinal variations may increase the vulnerability of marine ectothermic organisms, where species close to the equator show lower thermal safety margins (Pinsky et al, 2019). Nevertheless, the spatial displacement of resources may not be easily followed by fisheries due to logistic constraints, meaning that local fishing activities may be restricted to harvest on resources located within the current harvesting areas (Ojea et al, 2020). As such, the productivity of marine resources are expected to undergo significant changes, and therefore, a considerable effect on the fishing small‐scale fishing activity is foreseen, generating the need to create management strategies at different latitudes (Garcia, 2003; Sunday et al, 2011).…”