Globally, spatial distributions of fish stocks are shifting but although the role of climate change in range shifts is increasingly appreciated, little remains known of the likely additional impact that high levels of fishing pressure might have on distribution. For North Sea cod, we show for the first time and in great spatial detail how the stock has shifted its distribution over the past 100 years. We digitized extensive historical fisheries data from paper charts in UK government archives and combined these with contemporary data to a time-series spanning 1913–2012 (excluding both World Wars). New analysis of old data revealed that the current distribution pattern of cod – mostly in the deeper, northern- and north-easternmost parts of the North Sea – is almost opposite to that during most of the Twentieth Century – mainly concentrated in the west, off England and Scotland. Statistical analysis revealed that the deepening, northward shift is likely attributable to warming; however, the eastward shift is best explained by fishing pressure, suggestive of significant depletion of the stock from its previous stronghold, off the coasts of England and Scotland. These spatial patterns were confirmed for the most recent 3½ decades by data from fisheries-independent surveys, which go back to the 1970s. Our results demonstrate the fundamental importance of both climate change and fishing pressure for our understanding of changing distributions of commercially exploited fish.
Over the past few decades, substantial funding has been directed towards improving scientific understanding and management of impacts of climate change in the marine environment. Following concerns that the key messages from these studies were not reaching the public, a comprehensive opinion poll of 10,000 European citizens in 10 countries was conducted to establish levels of awareness, concern, and trust among different demographic groups (by age, gender, proximity to the coast) and nationalities. Citizens exhibited varying levels of self-declared 'informedness' and concern. Citizens from Germany, Italy and Spain claimed to be the most informed on marine climate change issues; those from Czech Republic, Netherlands and Estonia claimed to be least informed. Respondents were least aware of ocean acidification and most aware of melting sea ice, pollution and overfishing. Citizens of Italy suggested that they were generally most concerned about marine climate change issues. Respondents from coastal areas claimed to be both more informed and more concerned than those living inland, as did females and older age groups (54-64 years). European citizens obtain information about climate change in the seas and ocean from different sources, particularly television and the internet. Trust in the various media sources varies among countries and demographic groups. Television is trusted most in Estonia, Germany and Ireland and least in France. The internet is trusted most in Italy, Czech Republic and Estonia, but least in France and the United Kingdom. 18-24 year olds are the biggest users of the internet, but trust this source less than older age groups. Academic scientists or those working for environmental NGOs are trusted more than scientists working for government or industry. Citizens from France are more trusting of industry than any other country polled. In terms of policy actions, most respondents highlighted mitigation measures as opposed to local-scale adaptation. Younger participants prioritised actions associated ...
Climate-driven changes in aquatic environments have already started to affect the European aquaculture sector's most commercially important finfish and shellfish species. In addition to changes in water quality and temperature that can directly influence fish production by altering health status, growth performance and/or feed conversion, the aquaculture sector also faces an uncertain future in terms of production costs and returns. For example, the availability of key ingredients for fish feeds (proteins, omega-3 fatty acids) will not only depend on future changes in climate, but also on social and political factors, thereby influencing feed costs. The future cost of energy, another main expenditure for fish farms, will also depend on various factors. Finally, marketing options and subsidies will have major impacts on future aquaculture profitability. Based on the framework of four socio-political scenarios developed in the EU H2020 project climate change and European aquatic resources (CERES), we defined how these key factors for the aquaculture sector could change in the future. We then apply these scenarios to make projections of how climate change and societal and economic trends influence the mid-century (2050) profitability of European aquaculture. We used an established benchmarking approach to contrast present-day and future economic performance of "typical farms" in selected European production regions under each of the scenarios termed "World Markets," "National Enterprise," "Global Sustainability" and "Local Stewardship." These scenarios were based partly on the IPCC Special Report on Emissions Scenarios framework and their representative concentration pathways (RCPs) and the widely used shared socio-economic pathways (SSPs). Together, these scenarios contrast local versus international emphasis on decision making, more versus less severe environmental change, and different consequences for producers due to future commodity prices, cash returns, and costs. The mid-century profitability of the typical farms was most sensitive to the future development of feed costs, price trends of returns, and marketing options as opposed to the direct effect of climate-driven changes in the environment. These results can inform adaptation planning by the European aquaculture sector. Moreover, applying consistent scenarios including societal and economic dimensions, facilitates regional to global comparisons of adaptation advice both within and across Blue Growth sectors.
It has proven extremely challenging for researchers to predict with confidence how human societies might develop in the future, yet managers and industries need to make projections in order to test adaptation and mitigation strategies designed to build resilience to long-term shocks. This paper introduces exploratory scenarios with a particular focus on European aquaculture and fisheries and describes how these scenarios were designed. Short-, medium- and long-term developments in socio-political drivers may be just as important in determining profits, revenues and prospects in the aquaculture and fisheries industries as physical drivers such as long-term climate change. Four socio-political-economic futures were developed, based partly on the IPCC SRES (Special Report on Emissions Scenarios) framework and partly on the newer system of Shared Socio-economic Pathways (SSPs). 'Off theshelf' narrative material as well as quantitative outputs were 'borrowed' from earlier frameworks but supplemented with material generated through in-depth stakeholder workshops involving industry and policy makers. Workshop participants were tasked to outline how they thought their sector might look under the four future worlds and, in particular, to make use of the PESTEL conceptual framework (Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Environmental, and Legal) as an aide memoire to help define the scope of each scenario. This work was carried out under the auspices of the EU Horizon2020 project CERES (Climate change and European aquatic RESources), and for each 'CERES scenario' (World Markets, National Enterprise, Global Sustainability and Local Stewardship), additional quantitative outputs were generated, including projections of future fuel and fish prices, using the MAGNET (Modular Applied GeNeral EquilibriumTool) modeling framework. In developing and applying the CERES scenarios, we have demonstrated that the basic architecture is sufficiently flexible to be used at a wide diversity of scales. We urge the climate science community to adopt a similar scenarios framework, based around SSPs, to facilitate global cross-comparison of fisheries and aquaculture model outputs more broadly and to harmonize communication regarding potential future bioeconomic impacts of climate change.
Climate-driven changes in aquatic environments have already started to affect the European aquaculture sector's most commercially important finfish and shellfish species. In addition to changes in water quality and temperature that can directly influence fish production by altering health status, growth performance and/or feed conversion, the aquaculture sector also faces an uncertain future in terms of production costs and returns. For example, the availability of key ingredients for fish feeds (proteins, omega-3 fatty acids) will not only depend on future changes in climate, but also on social and political factors, thereby influencing feed costs. The future cost of energy, another main expenditure for fish farms, will also depend on various factors. Finally, marketing options and subsidies will have major impacts on future aquaculture profitability. Based on the framework of four socio-political scenarios developed in the EU H2020 project climate change and European aquatic resources (CERES), we defined how these key factors for the aquaculture sector could change in the future. We then apply these scenarios to make projections of how climate change and societal and economic trends influence the mid-century (2050) profitability of European aquaculture. We used an established benchmarking approach to contrast present-day and future economic performance of "typical farms" in selected European production regions under each of the scenarios termed "World Markets," "National Enterprise," "Global Sustainability" and "Local Stewardship." These scenarios were based partly on the IPCC Special Report on Emissions Scenarios framework and their representative concentration pathways (RCPs) and the widely used shared socio-economic pathways (SSPs). Together, these scenarios contrast local versus international emphasis on decision making, more versus less severe environmental change, and different consequences for producers due to future commodity prices, cash returns, and costs. The mid-century profitability of the typical ...
To understand changes in ecosystems, the appropriate scale at which to study them must be determined. Large marine ecosystems (LMEs) cover thousands of square kilometres and are a useful classification scheme for ecosystem monitoring and assessment. However, averaging across LMEs may obscure intricate dynamics within. The purpose of this study is to mathematically determine local and regional patterns of ecological change within an LME using empirical orthogonal functions (EOFs). After using EOFs to define regions with distinct patterns of change, a statistical model originating from control theory is applied (Nonlinear AutoRegressive Moving Average with eXogenous input – NARMAX) to assess potential drivers of change within these regions. We have selected spatial data sets (0.5° latitude × 1°longitude) of fish abundance from North Sea fisheries research surveys (spanning 1980–2008) as well as of temperature, oxygen, net primary production and a fishing pressure proxy, to which we apply the EOF and NARMAX methods. Two regions showed significant changes since 1980: the central North Sea displayed a decrease in community size structure which the NARMAX model suggested was linked to changes in fishing; and the Norwegian trench region displayed an increase in community size structure which, as indicated by NARMAX results, was primarily linked to changes in sea‐bottom temperature. These regions were compared to an area of no change along the eastern Scottish coast where the model determined the community size structure was most strongly associated to net primary production. This study highlights the multifaceted effects of environmental change and fishing pressures in different regions of the North Sea. Furthermore, by highlighting this spatial heterogeneity in community size structure change, important local spatial dynamics are often overlooked when the North Sea is considered as a broad‐scale, homogeneous ecosystem (as normally is the case within the political Marine Strategy Framework Directive).
It has proven extremely challenging for researchers to predict with confidence how human societies might develop in the future, yet managers and industries need to make projections in order to test adaptation and mitigation strategies designed to build resilience to long-term shocks. This paper introduces exploratory scenarios with a particular focus on European aquaculture and fisheries and describes how these scenarios were designed. Short-, mediumand long-term developments in socio-political drivers may be just as important in determining profits, revenues and prospects in the aquaculture and fisheries industries as physical drivers such as longterm climate change. Four socio-political-economic futures were developed, based partly on the IPCC SRES (Special Report on Emissions Scenarios) framework and partly on the newer system of Shared Socio-economic Pathways (SSPs). 'Off the shelf' narrative material as well as quantitative outputs were 'borrowed' from earlier frameworks but supplemented with material generated through in-depth stakeholder workshops involving industry and policy makers. Workshop participants were tasked to outline how they thought their sector might look under the four future worlds and, in particular, to make use of the PESTEL conceptual framework (Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Environmental, and Legal) as an aide memoire to help define the scope of each scenario. This work was carried out under the auspices of the EU Horizon 2020 project CERES (Climate change and European aquatic RESources), and for each 'CERES scenario' (World Markets, National Enterprise, Global Sustainability and Local Stewardship), additional quantitative outputs were generated, including projections of future fuel and fish prices, using the MAGNET (Modular Applied GeNeral Equilibrium Tool) modeling framework. In developing and applying the CERES scenarios, we have demonstrated that the basic architecture is sufficiently flexible to be used at a wide diversity of scales. We urge the climate science ...
The datasets described here bring together quality-controlled seawater temperature measurements from over 130 years of departmental government-funded marine science investigations in the UK (United Kingdom). Since before the foundation of a Marine Biological Association fisheries laboratory in 1902 and through subsequent evolutions as the Directorate of Fisheries Research and the current Centre for Environment Fisheries & Aquaculture Science, UK government marine scientists and observers have been collecting seawater temperature data as part of oceanographic, chemical, biological, radiological, and other policy-driven research and observation programmes in UK waters. These datasets start with a few tens of records per year, rise to hundreds from the early 1900s, thousands by 1959, and hundreds of thousands by the 1980s, peaking with > 1 million for some years from 2000 onwards. The data source systems vary from time series at coastal monitoring stations or offshore platforms (buoys), through repeated research cruises or opportunistic sampling from ferry routes, to temperature extracts from CTD (conductivity, temperature, depth) profiles, oceanographic, fishery and plankton tows, and data collected from recreational scuba divers or electronic devices attached to marine animals. The datasets described have not been included in previous seawater temperature collation exercises (e.g. International Comprehensive Ocean–Atmosphere Data Set, Met Office Hadley Centre sea surface temperature data set, the centennial in situ observation-based estimates of sea surface temperatures), although some summary data reside in the British Oceanographic Data Centre (BODC) archive, the Marine Environment Monitoring and Assessment National (MERMAN) database and the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) data centre. We envisage the data primarily providing a biologically and ecosystem-relevant context for regional assessments of changing hydrological conditions around the British Isles, although cross-matching with satellite-derived data for surface temperatures at specific times and in specific areas is another area in which the data could be of value (see e.g. Smit et al., 2013). Maps are provided indicating geographical coverage, which is generally within and around the UK Continental Shelf area, but occasionally extends north from Labrador and Greenland to east of Svalbard and southward to the Bay of Biscay. Example potential uses of the data are described using plots of data in four selected groups of four ICES rectangles covering areas of particular fisheries interest. The full dataset enables extensive data synthesis, for example in the southern North Sea where issues of spatial and numerical bias from a data source are explored. The full dataset also facilitates the construction of long-term temperature time series and an examination of changes in the phenology (seasonal timing) of ecosystem processes. This is done for a wide geographic area with an exploration of the limitations of data coverage over long periods. Throughout, we highlight and explore potential issues around the simple combination of data from the diverse and disparate sources collated here. The datasets are available on the Cefas Data Hub ( https://www.cefas.co.uk/cefas-data-hub/ ). The referenced data sources are listed in Sect. 5.
The datasets described here bring together quality-controlled seawater temperature measurements from over 130 years of departmental government-funded marine science investigations in the UK (United Kingdom). Since before the foundation of a Marine Biological Association fisheries laboratory in 1902 and through subsequent evolutions as the Directorate of Fisheries Research and the current Centre for Environment Fisheries & Aquaculture Science, UK government marine scientists and observers have been collecting seawater temperature data as part of oceanographic, chemical, biological, radiological, and other policy-driven research and observation programmes in UK waters. These datasets start with a few tens of records per year, rise to hundreds from the early 1900s, thousands by 1959, and hundreds of thousands by the 1980s, peaking with > 1 million for some years from 2000 onwards. The data source systems vary from time series at coastal monitoring stations or offshore platforms (buoys), through repeated research cruises or opportunistic sampling from ferry routes, to temperature extracts from CTD (conductivity, temperature, depth) profiles, oceanographic, fishery and plankton tows, and data collected from recreational scuba divers or electronic devices attached to marine animals. The datasets described have not been included in previous seawater temperature collation exercises (e.g. International Comprehensive Ocean–Atmosphere Data Set, Met Office Hadley Centre sea surface temperature data set, the centennial in situ observation-based estimates of sea surface temperatures), although some summary data reside in the British Oceanographic Data Centre (BODC) archive, the Marine Environment Monitoring and Assessment National (MERMAN) database and the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) data centre. We envisage the data primarily providing a biologically and ecosystem-relevant context for regional assessments of changing hydrological conditions around the British Isles, although cross-matching with satellite-derived data for surface temperatures at specific times and in specific areas is another area in which the data could be of value (see e.g. Smit et al., 2013). Maps are provided indicating geographical coverage, which is generally within and around the UK Continental Shelf area, but occasionally extends north from Labrador and Greenland to east of Svalbard and southward to the Bay of Biscay. Example potential uses of the data are described using plots of data in four selected groups of four ICES rectangles covering areas of particular fisheries interest. The full dataset enables extensive data synthesis, for example in the southern North Sea where issues of spatial and numerical bias from a data source are explored. The full dataset also facilitates the construction of long-term temperature time series and an examination of changes in the phenology (seasonal timing) of ecosystem processes. This is done for a wide geographic area with an exploration of the limitations of data coverage over long periods. Throughout, we highlight and explore potential issues around the simple combination of data from the diverse and disparate sources collated here. The datasets are available on the Cefas Data Hub (https://www.cefas.co.uk/cefas-data-hub/). The referenced data sources are listed in Sect. 5.
Climate change is anticipated to have long-term and widespread direct consequences for the European marine ecosystems and subsequently for the European fishery sector. Additionally, many socio-economic and political factors linked to climate change scenarios will impact the future development of fishing industries. Robust projection modeling of bioeconomic consequences of climate change on the European fishing sector must identify all these factors and their potential future interaction. In this study, four socio-political scenarios developed in the EU project CERES (Climate change and European aquatic RESources) were operationalized and used in model projections of marine wild capture fisheries. Four CERES scenarios (?World Markets,? ?National Enterprise,? ?Global Sustainability? and ?Local Stewardship") were based on the IPCC framework of Shared Socio-economic Pathways (SSPs). For each of these scenarios, a set of quantitative outputs was generated to allow projections of bio-economic impacts to mid-century (2050) on wild-capture fisheries operating in different European regions. Specifically, projections accounted for future changes in fisheries management targets, access regulations, international agreements, fish and fuel prices, technological developments and marine spatial planning. This study thoroughly describes the elements of these four fisheries scenarios and demonstrates an example of the ?regionalization? of these scenarios by summarizing how they were applied to the North Sea flatfish fishery. Bioeconomic projections highlight the importance of future developments in fuel and fish price development to the viability of that and other fisheries. Adapting these scenarios for use in other models and regions outside the 10 European fisheries examined in CERES would be highly beneficial by allowing direct comparison of the bioeconomic risks and opportunities posed by climate change.
Climate change is anticipated to have long-term and widespread direct consequences for the European marine ecosystems and subsequently for the European fishery sector. Additionally, many socio-economic and political factors linked to climate change scenarios will impact the future development of fishing industries. Robust projection modeling of bioeconomic consequences of climate change on the European fishing sector must identify all these factors and their potential future interaction. In this study, four socio-political scenarios developed in the EU project CERES (Climate change and European aquatic RESources) were operationalized and used in model projections of marine wild capture fisheries. Four CERES scenarios ("World Markets,""National Enterprise," "Global Sustainability" and "Local Stewardship") were based on the IPCC framework of Shared Socio-economic Pathways (SSPs). For each of these scenarios, a set of quantitative outputs was generated to allow projections of bio-economic impacts to mid-century (2050) on wild-capture fisheries operating in different European regions. Specifically, projections accounted for future changes in fisheries management targets, access regulations, international agreements, fish and fuel prices, technological developments and marine spatial planning. This study thoroughly describes the elements of these four fisheries scenarios and demonstrates an example of the "regionalization" of these scenarios by summarizing how they were applied to the North Sea flatfish fishery. Bioeconomic projections highlight the importance of future developments in fuel and fish price development to the viability of that and other fisheries. Adapting these scenarios for use in other models and regions outside the 10 European fisheries examined in CERES would be highly beneficial by allowing direct comparison of the bioeconomic risks and opportunities posed by climate change.
