Adaptation of fishing communities to climate-driven shifts in target species

Abstract

Climate change is causing shifts in marine species’ distributions, disrupting fishers and fishing communities and threatening food security. These changes affect all fishing activities, from small-scale to industrial fishing, and have implications for livelihoods, economies, and society along the entire seafood supply chain. Understanding fisheries as social-ecological systems (SESs) that include dynamic responses and feedbacks for the targeted stocks, the fishers, and the fishing industry provides an essential standpoint for thinking about fisheries’ adaptation to climate change. In this Perspective, we briefly summarize the ecological and socioeconomic impacts of target species’ distribution shifts. We propose using a resilience perspective where fishery SESs can respond to climate changes bymaintaining, coping, adapting, and/or transforming the system. In this context, we identify what specific actions by individuals, groups, and institutions allow the fishery system to respond in these ways and discuss policy solutions to allow for adaptation and transformation to shifting species distributions.