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Fisheries and aquaculture climate science – Potential impacts, adaptation and mitigation - overview of current scientific knowledge and
cutting-edge developments.
John Pinnegar Seafish Common Language Group –
Thursday 22nd June, Friend’s House London
The UK Climate Change Act (2008) The Climate Change Act 2008 made the UK the first country in the world to have a legally binding long-term framework to cut carbon emissions. It also created a framework for building the UK’s ability to adapt to climate change, including: 1. a UK wide climate change risk assessment that must take place every
five years
2. a national adaptation programme which must be put in place every five years to address the most pressing climate change risks to England
3. Powers to direct “reporting authorities” (companies with functions of a public nature such as water and energy utilities) to prepare reports on how they are assessing and acting on the risks and opportunities from a changing climate.
Aims to “support the UK seafood industry to develop a managed adaptive approach to climate change” Comprised a literature review, substantive collaboration with the industry, 15 semi-structured interviews and 3 workshops Considered all aspects of climate change (temperature, storminess, sea level rise, ocean acidification etc.) Covered both domestic and international Priority risks were identified in terms of: (1) confidence, (2) proximity, (3) severity, (4) possible adaptation actions
In December 2015, SeaFish, together with Cefas and the UK Marine Climate Change Impacts Partnership (MCCIP) published it’s Adaptation Reporting Powers (ARP) report.
A‘hot spot’ of climate change…..
One of 20 sites identified by Hobday & Pecl (2013) as having warmed the fastest
Changes in surface temperature of the North Sea (SST, ºC)
The changes have been up to six times larger than the global average over the past 25 years.
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1890 1910 1930 1950 1970 1990 2010
Marsdiep SST Dover SST Central England Air Torungen SST HADISST North Sea Helgoland SST
Cool period in 1969
Dramatic warming after 1988/89
Warm period in 1930s
ºC
The North Sea – a ‘hot spot’ of climate change…..
Observed ‘northward’ distribution shifts
• In recent years the have been a number of very highly cited papers using Cefas survey data...
• 70% of the fish species have responded to warming by changing distribution and abundance (Simpson et al. 2011) 2011).
• Centres of distribution have generally shifted by distances ranging from 48 to 403 km (Perry et al. 2005).
• The North Sea demersal fish assemblage deepened by ~3.6 m per decade between 1980 and 2004 (Dulvy et al. 2008).
Temperature response
Winners & Losers
114 years of research survey data..
Huxley J & S Miles
Platessa George Bligh
Sir Lancelot Clione
Cirolana Cefas Endeavour
We monitor all fish species, including their abundance and size We have noted a strong ‘subtropicalization’ of the North Sea whereby warm-water species with smaller maximum body size have increased in abundance
• van der Kooij et al. (2016) extracted squid catches from Cefas trawl survey data in the North Sea (1980–2014); collected during late summer (August–September).
• Squid distribution across the North Sea increased dramatically over the 35-year time series, occurring at only 20% of survey stations in 1984, compared to 60% in 2014.
• Significantly positive relationships were found between this increase and climate variables (including seawater temperature etc.).
van der Kooij et al. (2006) Journal of Biogeography, 43, 2285–2298
Squid…
van der Kooij et al. (2006) Journal of Biogeography, 43, 2285–2298
Squid…
Summer squid fisheries have expanded rapidly in the Moray Firth in particular, as a means of maintaining income given restrictions preventing vessels from pursuing more traditional species such as haddock and cod.
• According to the most recent (2016) assessment, populations were heavily overfished in the early-mid 2000s.
• However, fishing has been significantly reduced through vessel decommissioning schemes and controls on effort.
• Stock biomass has increased to a level considered sustainable (288,000 tonnes in 2015), but this recovery has been very slow.
• This is largely a reflection of continued poor ‘recruitment’ (i.e. the number of larval and juvenile fish that survive to be exploited).
• This is thought to be related to excessively warm conditions since the mid-1990s, that do not favour cod reproduction.
Cod…
90% of cod consumed in the UK is imported from countries further North (Iceland and Norway)
ICES Stock Assessment 2015
Seabass…
ICES Stock Assessment 2015
• European seabass had been held up as a ‘poster child’ of marine climate change in the UK.
• Evidence suggests that populations, did expand dramatically in the early 2000s,
• In recent years, fishing mortality has reached unsustainable levels (fisheries expanded at too fast a rate), such that recruitment success has apparently been damaged (not enough spawning adults to maintain the population);
• A few cooler winters (in 2009/10 and 2010/11) seem to have halted the expansion, and stocks have begun to decline
North Atlantic Mackerel……
Shortly after, Iceland and the Faroe Islands unilaterally claimed quota for mackerel (146,000 and 150,000 tonnes, respectively, in 2011; or 46% of total catches) Changes in mackerel distribution have been linked to several possible factors, including warmer seas, changes in food availability and a density-dependent expansion of the stock.
In 2006, mackerel was first observed in significant amounts east of Iceland as by-catch in the Norwegian spring-spawning herring fishery
Such disagreements may become more common place in the future with CC and Brexit
Projecting future fish distributions…
Habitat models have been developed to predict future changes in distributions of many marine species
Such models examine the relationships between key climatic variables and species distributions, mostly based on historical distributional data.
Some of the more commonly applied techniques include Maxent, BioMapper, the genetic algorithm GARP, GLMs, GAMs, Aquamaps etc.
Turbot
Cod
Seabass
(from fishbase.org)
‘Aquamaps’ is used to generate the distribution maps you see on Fishbase
Future projections of fish distribution…….
Sea Surface Temperature (SST) and Sea Bottom Temperature (SBT) in the North Sea under the IPCC A2 (medium emissions) scenario Predicted distributions of habitat suitability (0-1) in 1)
1985 and 2) 2050 for Dipturus batis using AquaMaps
1985
2050
Jones et al. (2013), PLoS ONE 8(1): e54216
Sole Brill
Plaice Turbot
Scampi
L Sole
Monkfish
Cod
Haddock
Seabass
The ensemble projections suggest northward shifts in distribution at an average rate of 27 km per decade (the current rate is around 20km per decade for fish in the North Sea, Dulvy et al. 2008) Overall, median projected rates of shift were significantly greater for pelagic than demersal species, at 277 compared to 168 km respectively over the 65 years
Heading North....
Miranda Jones PhD Thesis (UEA 2013)
John dory
Red mullet
Hake Whiting
Winners & Losers....
Defra (2013) Economics of Climate Resilience
Winners…
Losers…
‘Choke species’…
In October 2014 the EU introduced a ban on discarding and thus a requirement to land all fish caught. Once the least plentiful quota - the “choke species”—is exhausted, the whole fishery must cease operation Hake, a warm-water species, has witnessed a dramatic increase in biomass and has recolonized the North Sea where it had largely been absent for over 50 years. Low quota for hake in the North Sea will become a limiting factor, that may result in premature closure of the entire demersal mixed fishery
Baudron and Fernandez (2015)
ECR (Economics of Climate Resilience)
This study included a detailed assessment of whether or not the UK fish catching sector can adapt to the opportunities (and threats) associated with future climate change. Used the analyses of Jones et al. (2012, 2013) The ECR focussed on species increasing in the UK EEZ, such as anchovy, squid, seabass, scallops, boarfish, and hake. “is there a case for further intervention to deliver effective adaptation given the current context”?
The key adaptation actions the UK fishing industry is likely to make include: 1. Travelling further to fish for current species, if stocks
move away from UK ports.
2. Diversifying the livelihoods of port communities, this may include recreational fishing
3. Increasing vessel capacity if stocks of currently fished
species increase.
4. Changing gear to fish for different species, if new or more profitable opportunities are available.
5. Developing routes to export markets to match the changes in catch supplied.
ECR (Economics of Climate Resilience)
Advances in Seasonal to Decadal Predictability Studies have begun to demonstrate the potential for climate predictions on decadal time scales, particularly in the North Atlantic region. It is hoped that within the next few years, ‘near real-time’ forecasts (3–5 year lead in times) will become available for climatic conditions around Europe, making it conceivable that these could be used by fishery scientists to generate short-term stock forecasts.
Climate change is not just about temperature…
Projections of future storminess are very uncertain, but generally for the UK we expect more frequent, larger storms During the winter of 2013/2014 strong storm events had devastating consequences for the inshore fishing industry. Many vessels were tied up in port for more than 5 months, with implications for revenues, profits and local economies and damage to both onshore infrastructure and to the fishing vessels themselves. The winter of 2013/14 was the stormiest in the last 66-years (Matthews et al. 2014) Fishing remains the most dangerous occupation in the UK, the fatal accident rate is 115 times higher than that in the general workforce.
A preliminary analysis of fishery disruption in southwest England used satellite-derived vessel monitoring data to characterise the relationship between weather variables and behaviour of the fleet.
Fishing effort was greatly curtailed whenever wind speed exceeded 10 m/second, but particularly so when winds exceeded 15 m/second.
By understanding how fisheries have responded to adverse weather in the past, we can try to anticipate how the industry might be impacted in the future.
Storminess and Disruption to Fishing… .
Wind speed (m/s) by week of the year 2014
Week 5 2014 Week 6 2014
Thank you…
In 2017-2018, look out for: 1. A climate change ‘watching brief’ document
from SeaFish and Cefas.
2. A new Adaptation Reporting Powers (ARP) report on climate change risk and adaptation in the aquaculture sector.
3. A new report from the UK Marine Climate Change Impacts Partnership (MMCIP) end July 2017
4. Outputs from two EU projects focused on climate change, fisheries and aquaculture – CLIMEFISH and CERES