August 30, 2018 — Better management of fisheries and fishing rights around the world could increase profits and leave more fish in the sea as long as measures to meet climate obligations are taken, new research has found.
Even if temperatures rise by as much as 4C above pre-industrial levels – in the upper range of current forecasts – the damaging effects on fishing can be reduced through improving how stocks are fished and managed.
Governments are meeting from 4 September in New York for the first round of talks on a new global treaty of the high seas, which would aim to conserve overfished stocks and make access to key fisheries more equitable. Any agreement is likely to take several years to negotiateand longer to come into force, but scientists say there is no time to be lost, given the magnitude of the threat to the world’s marine ecosystems.
Climate change is already causing the movement of some species as their traditional habitats grow warmer, and overfishing is wreaking heavy damage on stocks. However, by adapting fisheries management to a warming climate, and instituting better systems such as monitoring of fleets, the global catch can be increased despite these factors, according to the paper published on Wednesday in the journal Science Advances.
“This is a positive message amid the doom and gloom,” said Kristin Kleisner, one of the authors of the study and a senior scientist at the US Environmental Defense Fund. “We can control how we manage our fisheries. We will have severe effects [from climate change] but this shows what we can do as humans to control that.”