WP220 – Marine ecosystems and fisheries

Tony Beeching

Cefas

Objectives

• Use WP110 outputs to examine future impact on fish biology, distribution and availability to fleets

• Examine impact on ecosystem and fishery productivity

• Examine economic implications

Task 1 - Review

• Define current situation

• Identify appropriate models (biology, ecosystem)

• Identify best data

Task 2 – Condition models

• Ensure models are as realistic as possible

• Use historical data identified in task 1

• Note issues projecting models beyond range of biology/ecology seen in the past

Task 3 – Fish stock distribution

• Impact of climate on distribution– Implications for fishers, economics, etc.

• Propose use of climate envelopes (Cheung et al.)• Produce future distributions (and potentially catch)

Task 4 – Impacts on fish biology

• Impact of climate on growth/reproduction/mortality• Use simulation approaches (e.g. Kell et al.)• Examine future sustainability under climate

change (species specific)

Task 5 – Impacts on ecosystem

• Use Ecopath to force existing ecosystem models under climate change– Primary productivity?– Fishing scenarios?

• Give overview of potential ecosystem impacts

0

0.5

1

1.5

2

2.5

3

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 91

01

11

21

31

41

51

61

71

81

92

0

Birds

Nile perch

Juv. Lates

Catfishes

Lungfish

Snoutfishes

Haplochromines

Dagaa

Nile tilapia

Other fishes

Task 6 - Economics

• Examine potential impacts– Fish quantities– Fish availability

• Note issues with future pricing etc.

• Implications of alternative scenarios

Deliverables

• Review

• Conditioned models

• Scientific papers:– Impacts on fish distribution– Impacts on biology of specific species– Impacts on ecosystem

Links with other WP

• How we link is a critical consideration• Although no topic areas should be

avoided, we may need to identify/triage primary links.

• We have been concerned with inputs to our WPs but equally we need to consider our outputs (WP3).

• Identify key contact persons (for Cefas – Graham.Pilling)

Issues to consider

• At what date shall we set the baseline (retrospective ~ to show long term patterns and trends?) (status quo)

• What is the time series for future projections e.g. 2050 or 2100?

• ….or a dec C rise for projection scenarios?• What is the spatial scale of outputs from WP1 (e.g. 0.5

deg square)• Format of data (file type, size) – implications if need for

conversion (processing time and resources) (potential error)

• How will we share data/informationSpecific outputs