Climate change and fisheries

Abstract

There is considerable evidence that Mediterranean marine species have been shifting their ranges, migration patterns, seasonal activities and periodicities, abundances, growth and mortality rates, and consequently their trophic interactions in response to climate change and variability. These responses may ultimately have significant consequences for ecosystem productivity, biodiversity and functioning and hence for the overall goods and ecosystem services they provide, especially the production of living resources (Kirby & Beaugrand 2009, Doney et al. 2012).

Climate change is an additional pressure on marine ecosystems that are already subject to many anthropogenic disturbances such as fishing activities. This is especially true in the Mediterranean Sea, where a series of human impacts co-occur and interact (Coll et al. 2010, Micheli, Halpern, et al. 2013). The consequences of climate change for marine resources need to be evaluated in this context and research and management need to take interactions between fishing, other human impacts, and climate into account (Brander 2010, Perry et al. 2010). This chapter thus has three aims: (i) to investigate the synergy between climate and fishing (a major human impact onMediterranean marine ecosystems) and, using some examples from the Mediterranean Sea, to highlight how these two factors interact, from the individual to the ecosystem scale, (ii) to assess and quantify the consequences of climate change for the composition of fishery catches in theMediterranean Sea, and (iii) to address the consequences of climate change for the management tools and strategies implemented in the region