Do fishers follow fish displaced by climate warming?
Climate change is associated with altered oceanographic conditions that lead to a shift in the geographical distribution of fish. To assess the impact of climate change on fisheries, it is necessary to go beyond the forecasts of catch potential and understand how fishers respond to changing fishing grounds. Many previous studies have explicitly or implicitly assumed that fishermen will follow the fish that are displaced by global warming. In a broad study analysing a long-term, large-scale, high-resolution data set in combination with a detailed oceanographic model, however, it was shown that fishermen show a strong loyalty to their locations.
Story Highlights:
- We find that spawning suitability can explain the number of vessels in the basic model, but once we control for area-specific effects (such as the distance to shore, or other features that do not shift through time), spawning suitability no longer explains the number of vessels in a given area.
- In contrast, the number of vessels in the same area the week or the year earlier continues to be a significant predictor of fishing effort. Therefore, our analysis does not support the hypothesis that fishers follow fish as fish following suitable oceanographic conditions, at least over the time horizon that we study in this paper.
- Rather, our results are in line with fishers exhibiting “site fidelity”, even in an industrialized fishery with little technological or regulatory constraints on mobility.
Conclusions
Many fishermen diversify their fishing behaviour, even if this involves additional costs. In doing so, they are already involuntarily taking measures to adapt to mitigate future risks from changes in catch quotas due to global warming. However, they carry these out in their traditional fishing grounds. Following the fish around was probably not an option for the fishermen – although the additional time and fuel required could also play a role.