Shifting perceptions of rapid temperature changes’ effects on marine fisheries, 1945–2017

Abstract

Climate‐driven warming has both social and ecological effects on marine fisheries. While recent changes due to anthropogenic global warming have been documented, similar basin‐wide changes have occurred in the past due to natural temperature fluctuations. Here, we document the effects of rapidly changing water temperatures along the United States’ east coast using observations from fisheries newspapers during a warming phase (1945–1951) and subsequent cooling phase (1952–1960) of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, which we compared to similar recent observations of warming waters (1998–2017). Historical warming and cooling events affected the abundance of species targeted by fishing, the prevalence of novel and invasive species, and physical access to targeted species. Fishing communities viewed historical cooling waters twice as negatively as they did warming waters (72% vs. 35% of observations). Colder waters were associated with a decrease in fishing opportunity due to storminess, while warming waters were associated with the potential for new fisheries. In contrast, recent warming waters were viewed as strongly negative by fishing communities (72% of observations), associated with disease, reductions in abundances of target species, and shifts in distributions across jurisdictional lines. This increasing perception that warming negatively affects local fisheries may be due to an overall reduction of opportunity in fisheries over the past half century, an awareness of the relative severity of warming today, larger changes in American culture, or a combination of these factors. Negative perceptions of recent warming waters’ effects on fisheries suggest that fishing communities are currently finding the prospect of climate adaptation difficult.

Not All Those Who Wander Are Lost – Responses of Fishers’ Communities to Shifts in the Distribution and Abundance of Fish

“…We found that, in all but two of our focal communities, catch diversity declined between the two time periods examined (Figure 8 top). This aligns with the region-wide trend toward vessels catching fewer species and/or becoming more specialized (Seara, 2014;Stoll et al, 2016;McClenachan et al, 2019), and it suggests higher levels of vulnerability for many communities, especially when compounded by declines in numbers of vessels and fisher-days (Supplementary Table B1) even as catch per trip increases in, for example, the large trawl communities of Gloucester, New Bedford, and Montauk (Supplementary Table B1).…”

Incorporating evolutionary based tools in cephalopod fisheries management

“…The link between fast life history and the strength of the global warming impact on fished stocks has also been recently confirmed by Free et al (2019). And last, but not the least, global change exerts its fishery relevant effect due to declining ecosystem diversity, decreased resilience of exploited stocks, and temperature dependent distribution shifts (Perry et al 2005;McClenachan et al 2019). Such distribution shifts have been already documented for cephalopod species, including the octopuses (Ramos et al 2018).…”

Tissue-Specific and Time-Dependent Expressions of PC4s in Bay Scallop (Argopecten irradians irradians) Reveal Function Allocation in Thermal Response

“…Elevated seawater temperature has severely affected the biological activity of marine organisms including scallops, resulting in massive losses to fisheries in recent years [ 6 , 7 ]. In order to investigate the functions of AiPC4s in bay scallops under high-temperature stress, expression profiles of AiPC4s were detected in four tissues (mantles, gills, hearts, and hemocytes), which are all regarded as the major tissues in response to thermal stress in mollusks [ 92 , 93 , 94 ].…”

“…Specifically, coral reefs were the ecosystems most vulnerable to environmental impacts, removing substantial amounts of living coral with a warming climate [ 4 , 5 ]. Marine ecosystems have been significantly affected by elevated seawater temperature [ 6 ], and climate warming has also caused incalculable losses to fisheries for many years [ 7 ].…”