Climate impact on Italian fisheries (Mediterranean Sea)

Abstract

Global warming is increasingly affecting marine ecosystems and ecological services they provide. One of the major consequences is a shift in species geographical distribution, which may affect resources availability to fisheries. We computed the mean temperature of the catch (MTC) for Italian catches from 1972 to 2012 to test if an increase of warmer-water species against colder-water ones was observed. We further analysed the relationship among MTC, landings, fishing effort and climatic factors through a Linear Mixed Models approach. Global MTC increased at a rate of 0.12°C per decade. Though, by considering the influence of sea surface temperature (SST), a strongest increase (0.31°C) was estimated in southernmost areas, while in the northernmost basin (Northern Adriatic Sea) a decrease of 0.14°C was observed. SST resulted the most relevant driver, and the relationship between MTC and SST showed a high spatial variability both in terms of strength and sign, being positively stronger in southernmost areas while negative in the northernmost basin. The result is probably underestimated since several psychrophilous and thermophilous species were not included in the analysis. However, it seems that a change towards warmer-water species has already occurred in Italian marine ecosystems. Conversely, total landings temporal dynamics seem mostly driven by changes in fishing effort rather than by MTC and climatic factors. Consequently, fishery management strategies need to focalize primarily on fishing effort reduction, in order to reduce the pressure on the stocks while increasing their resilience to other stressors, among which global warming.

The Influence of the Spatial Scale on the Fishery Landings-SST Relationship

“…In the present study, although confirming the general relationship, we demonstrated that changing the spatial scale of analysis the situation can be quite different, which could affect also the MTC trend, as reported for the Adriatic Sea by Fortibuoni et al (2015).…”

“…Regarding the level of spatial aggregation, recent studies are commonly based on the Large Marine Ecosystem (LME) scale Gamito et al, 2015), even if the effects of climate changes on fishery can be detected also a smaller scale (Gamito et al, 2012;Fortibuoni et al, 2015).…”

Modeling species invasions using thermal and trophic niche dynamics under climate change

“…In this respect, fishing operations play an important role in shaping community structure as it was also emerging from previous analyses of historical data (Fortibuoni et al, 2010;Barausse et al, 2011). In light of the fact that anthropogenic pressure (here exemplified by fisheries) is the main stressor responsible for the loss of ecosystem resilience (Fortibuoni et al, 2015) to climate-related changes, the process of defining management strategy that policy makers and managers would normally consider are those that reduce fishing pressures that disproportionately degrade the system, or reduce the resilience. However, the present approach could be useful for evaluating management strategies that include deliberate and profitable counteraction of climate effects, such as targeting newly arriving species in a way that maximize or preserve the historical values or other values in the overall social-ecological system.…”

Correlation of changes in seasonal distribution and catch of red sea bream Pagrus major with winter temperature in the eastern Seto Inland Sea, Japan (1972–2010)

“…Climate change associated with global warming has been reported to affect marine ecosystems and fisheries production (Brander, ; Fortibuoni, Aldighieri, Giovanardi, Pranovi, & Zucchetta, ; Hare & Able, ; Kuwahara et al, ; Lacoue‐Labarthe et al, ; Tadokoro, Sugimoto, & Kishi, ). In addition, the increase in water temperature has been reported to induce a poleward shift in fish distribution (Barbeaux & Hollowed, ; Last et al, ; Perry et al, ), leading to changes in annual catch (Teixeira et al, ), fish fauna (Lloyd, Plaganyi, Weeks, Magno‐Canto, & Plaganyi, ; Masuda, ; Mavruk, Bengiil, Yeldan, Mamasorli, & Avsar, ), spawning period (Sims, Wearmouth, Genner, Southward, & Hawkins, ), and spawning ground (Villegas‐Hernández, Lloret, & Muñoz, ).…”