Long‐term variability in the fish assemblage around Japan over the last century and early warning signals of regime shifts

Abstract

Physical processes such as climatic and oceanographic variability, particularly decadal variability or climatic regime shifts defined as dramatic, abrupt changes in conditions that are persistent in time (Conversi et al., 2015), such as indicated by the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) and the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO)

Fish weight reduction in response to intra‐ and interspecies competition under climate change

“…This change impedes nutrient exchange between the upper and subsurface layers and reduces primary production in the upper layer, impacting the entire marine ecosystem (Li et al, 2020). In addition, the marine ecosystems in Japanese waters were strongly influenced by a typical wasp-waist control (Tian et al, 2023), in which a single species, or at most several species, of small planktivorous fishes entirely dominate marine ecosystems. Skud (1982) and Cury et al (2000) suggested that dominant small pelagic fish respond to environmental factors, and subordinate species, in turn, respond to the abundance of the dominant species, particularly through competition for prey.…”