Fisheries and Climate

Abstract

The European Science Foundation report “Towards a European marine research area” identifies five major scientific challenges for priority action, of which the first is “Ocean-climate coupling” and the second is “Sustainable exploitation of living and non-living resources”. This paper may be regarded as a link between these two, by examining the evidence that ocean climate affects fish stocks. The time series of fisheries and environmental information is relatively short to establish climatic effects on fish stocks, but evidence is presented from several areas of the northern North Atlantic during the 20th century. The warm period from 1930 to 1960 caused major changes in the distribution and abundance of many species, including cod, herring and capelin, which comprise a large proportion of the fisheries in this area. Recent research, which shows the influence of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) on many environmental variables and biological systems, has helped to shape our understanding of climatic effects across the whole North Atlantic. Future research will benefit from well coordinated assembly, analysis and modeling of comprehensive and appropriate environmental and biological data and the results can be used to improve the assessment and management offish stocks.