Arctic Fisheries in a Changing Climate

Mueter, Franz J.

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-81253-9_14

Cited by 3 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 54 publications

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“…This raises potential issues for governance and management of transboundary fish stocks and elevated risks of fisheries conflicts under continuing climatic changes [ 76 – 78 ]. For instance, the movement of fish stocks/populations out of their traditional fishing grounds can be challenging for resource managers and stakeholders [ 79 ], exacerbating the risks of overexploitation and the race-to-fish (i.e., competitive harvesting) of transboundary fishery resources [ 80 ]. Further, potential declines and/or extirpation of cold-adapted species of high economic value at their current distributional ranges may also lead to a potential switch to low value commercially-targeted species.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Future redistribution of fishery resources suggests biological and economic trade-offs according to the severity of the emission scenario

Alabia,

Molinos,

Hirata

et al. 2024

PLoS ONE

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Climate change is anticipated to have long-term and pervasive effects on marine ecosystems, with cascading consequences to many ocean-reliant sectors. For the marine fisheries sector, these impacts can be further influenced by future socio-economic and political factors. This raises the need for robust projections to capture the range of potential biological and economic risks and opportunities posed by climate change to marine fisheries. Here, we project future changes in the abundance of eight commercially important fish and crab species in the eastern Bering Sea and Chukchi Sea under different CMIP6 Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) leading to contrasting future (2021–2100) scenarios of warming, sea ice concentration, and net primary production. Our results revealed contrasting patterns of abundance and distribution changes across species, time periods and climate scenarios, highlighting potential winners and losers under future climate change. In particular, the least changes in future species abundance and distribution were observed under SSP126. However, under the extreme scenario (SSP585), projected Pacific cod and snow crab abundances increased and decreased, respectively, with concurrent zonal and meridional future shifts in their centers of gravity. Importantly, projected changes in species abundance suggest that fishing at the same distance from the current major port in the Bering Sea (i.e., Dutch Harbor) could yield declining catches for highly valuable fisheries (e.g., Pacific cod and snow crab) under SSP585. This is driven by strong decreases in future catches of highly valuable species despite minimal declines in maximum catch potential, which are dominated by less valuable taxa. Hence, our findings show that projected changes in abundance and shifting distributions could have important biological and economic impacts on the productivity of commercial and subsistence fisheries in the eastern Bering and Chukchi seas, with potential implications for the effective management of transboundary resources.

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