Potential Impacts of Climate Change on Shrimps Distribution of Commercial Importance in the Gulf of California

Abstract

The Gulf of California is the most productive fishing region in Mexico; its ecosystems contain a vast diversity of species with exploitation potential, some of them potentially vulnerable to climate change. This research was conducted to analyze, through habitat suitability models, the possible alterations in the distribution of the three shrimp species of the most importance for commercial fishing in the region: Litopenaeus stylirostris, Litopenaeus vannamei, and Farfantepenaeus californiensis. Habitat suitability models were built using the MaxEnt software, primary productivity data, temperature, salinity, bathymetry, substratum, coastal type, and geo-referenced occurrence records of the three species. Of the data, 70% was used on training, while the remaining 30% was used for validation. To make estimates of climate change impact on this fishery, projections on distribution of the three species from environmental forecasts generated by the intergovernmental panel on climate change until 2100 were made. The used model, that is in full development and expansion, could be considered as an applicable tool to other problems and showed efficiency rates above 90%. The species will maintain most of their historical distribution, but L. stylirostris and L. vannamei will have a new distribution area within the zones of the Magdalena-Almejas Bay and the Gulf of Ulloa, with an increase of 80% and 148% respectively; all species will have loss areas in the proportion of 16%, 2%, and 11%, respectively, along the southern Gulf of California.

Threads Outweigh Opportunities for the Shrimp Fishery in the Colombian Pacific Ocean under climate change scenarios

“…According to our SDM results, the crucial factors influencing the spatiotemporal distribution of the shallower water shrimps L. occidentalis and X. riveti are bottom temperature and salinity. This finding aligns with research conducted on other shallow shrimp species in diverse regions, such as Mexico (Cota-Durán et al, 2021), Brazil (Lopes et al, 2017), the Persian Gulf, the coasts of North, East, and West Australia, and the North of the Arabian Sea (Sharifian et al, 2022;Sharifian et al, 2023). However, in these studies, bathymetry consistently emerged as a significant variable shaping shrimp habitat suitability alongside temperature.…”

“…Such alterations, compounded by overfishing, lead to shifts in species composition and distribution, with potential consequences for the productivity of shrimp fisheries (Sharifian et al 2023). As the global temperature rise accelerates, these changes underscore the criticality of understanding and mitigating the effects on shrimp populations (Basher et al 2016;Cota-Durán et al 2021). As of now, only a limited number of climate change simulations have been conducted for shrimp species distributions.…”

The challenge of assessing the state of exploitation of short-lived fishery resources with limited data: the blue shrimp (Penaeus stylirostris) fishery in the Gulf of California, Mexico

“…One of the characteristics of short-lived populations is their dependence on the environment. In the case of penaeid shrimp, this feature has been widely reported in the literature (Garcia, 1988;Garcia, 1996;Arreguin-Sanchez et al, 2015;Diop et al, 2015;Lopes et al, 2018), including climate variability and its effects on blue shrimp populations the Gulf of California (Galindo-Bect et al, 2000;Castro-Ortiz and Lluch-Belda, 2008;Perez-Arvizu et al, 2009;Santamaria-del-Angel et al, 2011;Paéz-Osuna et al, 2016;Cota-Durań et al, 2021). In the case study, given the evidence reported in the literature, a brief analysis of the contribution of environmental variability in the context of the Kobe diagram, particularly related to PRR Lim , is provided.…”