Climate-change impacts and fisheries management challenges in the North Atlantic Ocean

Abstract

Climate-induced changes in the world’s oceans will have implications for fisheries productivity and management. Using a model ensemble from the Fisheries and Marine Ecosystem Model Intercomparison Project (Fish-MIP), we analyzed future trajectories of climate-change impacts on marine animal biomass and associated environmental drivers across the North Atlantic Ocean and within the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization (NAFO) convention area and evaluated potential consequences for fisheries productivity and management. Our ensemble results showed that the magnitude of projected biomass changes increased over time and from a low (RCP2.6) to high (RCP8.5) emissions scenario. Within individual NAFO divisions, however, projected biomass changes differed in the magnitude and sometimes direction of change between near (the 2030s) and far future (the 2090s) and contrasting emissions scenarios. By the 2090s, most NAFO divisions with historically (1990-1999) high fisheries landings were projected to experience biomass decreases of 5-40%, while Arctic and subarctic divisions with lower historical landings were projected to experience biomass increases between 20 and 70% under RCP8.5. Future trajectories of sea surface temperature and primary production corroborated that the far-future, high-emissions scenario poses the greatest risk to marine ecosystems and the greatest challenges to fisheries management. Our study summarizes future trends of marine animal biomass and underlying uncertainties related to model projections under contrasting climate-change scenarios. Understanding such climate-change impacts on marine ecosystems is imperative for ensuring that marine fisheries remain productive and sustainable in a changing ocean.

Toward Improved Model Capacities for Assessment of Climate Impacts on Coastal Bentho-Pelagic Food Webs and Ecosystem Services

“…The model approach of Kleisner et al (2017) supported the observed poleward shift of thermal fish habitats. This was also shown in the ensemble model study of Bryndum-Buchholz et al (2020) with a fish biomass increase in Arctic regions and a decrease in tropical regions. The fish collapse in the Northwest Atlantic was explored with statistical models, which revealed that the reason was a mixture of fishing and environmental impacts (Dempsey et al, 2018).…”

Next-generation ensemble projections reveal higher climate risks for marine ecosystems

“…While individual marine ecosystem models (MEMs) have explored climate impacts on ocean ecosystems, the Fisheries and Marine Ecosystem Model Intercomparison Project (Fish-MIP) compares models produced by different modelling groups into standardized ensemble projections 11 . Fish-MIP has explored a range of topics, including global 12 and regional 13 – 15 changes over the coming century and their potential socioeconomic consequences 8 .…”

Forecasted Shifts in Thermal Habitat for Cod Species in the Northwest Atlantic and Eastern Canadian Arctic

“…Predicting how climate change may alter the abundance and distribution of marine species is an important application of species distribution models (SDMs). The approach is rapidly expanding in the field of marine ecology (Freer et al, 2017;Robinson et al, 2017;Melo-Merino et al, 2020) and is increasingly being used to guide adaptive fisheries management, marine conservation plans, impact assessments, and policy decisions (Freer et al, 2017;Tittensor et al, 2019;Bryndum-Buchholz et al, 2020a). Species distribution forecast models combine known biological-environmental relationships with downscaled oceanographic models to project species range shifts under one or more Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) of greenhouse gas concentration trajectories.…”