EDFish

Selected tag(s): climate-resilient fisheries

Prioritizing Climate Resilience in United States Fisheries

The impacts of climate change are already apparent in U. S. offshore waters, creating challenges for fisheries, fishing communities and fisheries management. Examples of climate impacts are prevalent across all regions of the coastal U.S. As ocean temperatures warm, species distributions are shifting. For instance, market squid moving up the West Coast from Baja California to Oregon spurred a harvest boom in the Pacific Northwest. Species, including blue crabs and black sea bass, are shifting northward on the Atlantic coast. Read More »

Posted in Gulf of Mexico, Mid-Atlantic, New England, Policy, Seafood / Also tagged , , , | Comments are closed

Looking to the oceans for answers to the climate crisis

Three new reports examine the potential of blue carbon pathways to act as natural climate solutions.

By Kristin Kleisner, Monica Moritsch and Jamie Collins

Read More »

Posted in International, Science/Research / Also tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments are closed

The Climate-Resilient Fisheries Toolkit can help you build resilience now

By Jeff Young

Climate change and overfishing are increasingly straining fisheries and marine ecosystems, putting marine biodiversity, the nutrition of people in coastal communities and global food supply at greater risk. Fishers, community leaders and practitioners worldwide are poised to take action, but often grapple with uncertainty, limited data or insufficient resources. Meanwhile, the journey of building resilience can often feel daunting and overwhelming. These leaders and change-makers are not alone in their experiences and tangible solutions to these major challenges are within reach. Read More »

Posted in Global Fisheries, International, Science/Research / Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments are closed

Supporting climate-resilient fisheries during the UN Decade of Ocean Science

By EDF’s Jacob Eurich and Kristin Kleisner, and Kathy Mills, Gulf of Maine Research Institute

Fisheries, including the systems for harvesting, processing and marketing blue foods, are an important pillar of many economies, supporting hundreds of millions of livelihoods. Small-scale fisheries and aquaculture produce more than half of the global fish catch and two-thirds of all the blue foods we eat. Climate change continues to threaten fisheries, altering ocean ecosystems and transforming fish stocks, with climate-induced losses disproportionately impacting the regions and people most dependent on fish for protein and micronutrients—predominantly small-scale fishers in developing, small-island nations in the tropics.  Read More »

Posted in International, Science/Research / Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments are closed

Climate change is causing fishery problems, but we can solve them

By Eric Schwaab, Rod Fujita and Jacqui Vogel

Climate change is already transforming the distribution and abundance of fish stocks around the world. Warming temperatures, lower pH levels and many other factors are causing many fish species to shift to better habitats and others to shrink in abundance. This is problematic for the communities that rely on these stocks, especially when the shifts cross jurisdictional boundaries, such as those between fishery management zones or national exclusive economic zones, known as EEZs.

Climate-induced stock shifts are causing more overfishing, illegal, unregulated, and unreported fishing, discarding, higher fuel use, injustice and even armed conflict. Unless fishery management and fisheries become more adaptive and resilient to climate change, these problems will only worsen, but it’s not too late for solutions like flexible allocation systems, dynamic spatial management, ocean observing systems and international collaboration. Read More »

Posted in International, Policy / Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments are closed

Collaborative research sheds light on creating climate-resilient multispecies fisheries

Worldwide, there is considerable interest in developing fishery management options that balance social, economic and ecological goals for multispecies fisheries. Ideally, fisheries management should strive not only to produce good yields from single stocks, but also to avoid serial depletion and prevent adverse impacts of fishing on marine ecosystems — a difficult, but achievable task. Read More »

Posted in Cuba, International, Mexico, Policy, Science/Research / Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments are closed