Impact of ocean warming on sustainable fisheries management informs the Ecosystem Approach to Fisheries

Abstract

An integrated ecosystem model including fishing and the impact of rising temperatures, relative to species’ thermal ranges, was used to assess the cumulative effect of future climate change and sustainable levels of fishing pressure on selected target species. Historically, important stocks of cod and whiting showed declining trends caused by high fisheries exploitation and strong top-down control by their main predators (grey seals and saithe). In a no-change climate scenario these stocks recovered under sustainable management scenarios due to the cumulative effect of reduced fishing and predation mortalities cascading through the food-web. However, rising temperature jeopardised boreal stenothermal species: causing severe declines in grey seals, cod, herring and haddock, while eurythermal species were not affected. The positive effect of a higher optimum temperature for whiting, in parallel with declines of its predators such as seals and cod, resulted in a strong increase for this stock under rising temperature scenarios, indicating a possible change in the contribution of stocks to the overall catch by the end of the century. These results highlight the importance of including environmental change in the ecosystem approach to achieve sustainable fisheries management.

An End-to-End Model Reveals Losers and Winners in a Warming Mediterranean Sea

“…For instance, Hidalgo et al (2011) showed that the erosion of the age structure of harvested hake populations in the Mediterranean Sea may drastically alter their capacity to dampen environmental fluctuations. Ignoring the effects of climate change in stock assessment could compromise the validity of stock forecasts and affect the robustness of several biological reference points such as the Maximum Sustainable Yield (MSY) (Brander, 2010;Grafton, 2010;Link et al, 2011;Galbraith et al, 2017;Serpetti et al, 2017). However, improved fisheries and ecosystems management in a highly overexploited Mediterranean Sea could have the potential to offset many negative effects of climate change (Roberts et al, 2017;Gaines et al, 2018).…”

Current and potential contributions of the Gulf of Lion Fisheries Restricted Area to fisheries sustainability in the NW Mediterranean Sea

“…Food-web models can represent a useful tool for MPA assessment that can help to identify ecological trade-offs and synergies [72]. Results also show that trade-offs must be considered between fisheries management and climate change [73] and emphasize the need to include other stressors than fisheries to appropriately assess the future of marine ecosystems [26,27].…”

Effects of health status on pressure-induced changes in phocid immune function and implications for dive ability

“…Dive effort, including time spent diving, is also adjusted to increase energetic gain of foraging bouts in gray seals (Austin et al 2006). Thus changes in marine mammal diving behavior reflect environmental changes and shifts in ecosystem resources, which have not only ecological implications but can also be important from the perspective of human fisheries (Serpetti et al 2017). Additionally, the results of this study demonstrate the potential for undesirable activity or in-activity of immune cells to result from such changes in dive behavior caused by either foraging needs or stressors such as human disturbance or anthropogenic noise.…”