Climate change is going to have heavy impacts on the economic viability of current fisheries practices. This is the sobering message of the broadest review to date of the impact of climate change on fisheries and their profitability, led by Rashid Sumaila of the University of British Columbia. Its just been published in the journal Nature Climate Change.

The study draws on observations, experiments, and computer models to show that as climate change alters water temperature and chemical cycling in the oceans, the distribution and abundance of many marine species will be altered as well. While fisheries in a few regions, such as the far north (i.e. developed countries), may benefit from climate change, many other regions, particularly those in the tropics, can expect losses in revenues (see earlier sdupdate posts on this).

One good way to understand the economic consequences on a global scale is to look at regional examples. For example, the reduction in landings of pelagic fisheries in Peru as a result of changes in sea surface temperature during the 1997-1998 El Niño event caused more than US$26 million of revenue loss.

Biologically, maintaining more abundant populations can help increase fish's capacity to adapt to environmental change. Stopping overfishing is a key step to making marine systems more resilient for the changes that are already underway. Fish stocks will also be more robust to climate change if the combined stresses from overfishing, habitat degradation, pollution runoff, land-use transformation, competing aquatic resource uses and other anthropogenic factors are minimized.