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Anthropology

Shifts in fishing grounds

Nature Climate Change volume 2, pages 840–841 (2012)Cite this article

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Adaptation to climate change in fisheries is occurring very rapidly. Research now shows that it is a complex process whose outcomes can both mitigate and exacerbate impacts on fish populations.

Shifts in the distribution of fish populations that coincide with large-scale temperature increase and circulation changes are now well documented for northwest Atlantic waters2. More finely tuned studies of how climate and fishing indices correlate with biological indicators, such as decreased size of predators and increases in lower trophic levels, underscore the well-known fact that fishing is itself a leading cause of observed biological changes. But such work also raises the question of mechanistic relationships between climate-induced oceanographic changes and fishing as they affect the biota of marine ecosystems3.

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  1. Bonnie J. McCay is in the Department of Human Ecology, School of Environmental and Biological Sciences, Rutgers University, 55 Dudley Road, New Brunswick, New Jersey 08901, USA,

    Bonnie J. McCay

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  1. Bonnie J. McCay
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Correspondence to Bonnie J. McCay.

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McCay, B. Shifts in fishing grounds. Nature Clim Change 2, 840–841 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate1765

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