Potential consequences of climate change for primary production and fish production in large marine ecosystems

Existing methods to predict the effects of climate change on the biomass and production of marine communities are predicated on modelling the interactions and dynamics of individual species, a very challenging approach when interactions and distributions are changing and little is known about the ecological mechanisms driving the responses of many species. An informative parallel approach is to develop size-based methods. These capture the properties of food webs that describe energy flux and production at a particular size, independent of species' ecology. We couple a physical-biogeochemical model with a dynamic, size-based food web model to predict the future effects of climate change on fish biomass and production in 11 large regional shelf seas, with and without fishing effects. Changes in potential fish production are shown to most strongly mirror changes in phytoplankton production. We project declines of 30-60% in potential fish production across some important areas of tropical shelf and upwelling seas, most notably in the eastern Indo-Pacific, the northern Humboldt and the North Canary Current. Conversely, in some areas of the high latitude shelf seas, the production of pelagic predators was projected to increase by 28-89%.

Projecting marine fish production and catch potential in Bangladesh in the 21st century under long-term environmental change and management scenarios

The fisheries sector is crucial to the Bangladeshi economy and wellbeing, accounting for 4.4% of national Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and 22.8% of agriculture sector production, and supplying ca.60% of the national animal protein intake. Fish is vital to the 16 million Bangladeshis living near the coast, a number that has doubled since the 1980s. Here we develop and apply tools to project the long term productive capacity of Bangladesh marine fisheries under climate and fisheries management scenarios, based on downscaling a global climate model, using associated river flow and nutrient loading estimates, projecting high resolution changes in physical and biochemical ocean properties, and eventually projecting fish production and catch potential under different fishing mortality targets. We place particular interest on Hilsa shad (Tenualosa ilisha), which accounts for ca.11% of total catches, and Bombay duck (Harpadon nehereus), a low price fish that is the second highest catch in Bangladesh and is highly consumed by low income communities. It is concluded that the impacts of climate change, under greenhouse emissions scenario A1B, are likely to reduce the potential fish production in the Bangladesh Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) by less than 10%. However, these impacts are larger for the two target species. Under sustainable management practices we expect Hilsa shad catches to show a minor decline in potential catch by 2030 but a significant (25%) decline by 2060. However, if overexploitation is allowed catches are projected to fall much further, by almost 95% by 2060, compared to the Business as Usual scenario for the start of the 21st century. For Bombay duck, potential catches by 2060 under sustainable scenarios will produce a decline of less than 20% compared to current catches. The results demonstrate that management can mitigate or exacerbate the effects of climate change on ecosystem productivity.