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Rebuilding in the face of climate change

Published Article

Canada

Publication date: November 12, 2017

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This study evaluates winter flounder rebuilding potential under climate change by incorporating winter temperature into population models. Results indicate that warming reduces productivity, making recovery to historical levels improbable. Including environmental and fishing factors improves understanding of recruitment drivers and provides more realistic projections for adaptive management.

Subject Tags

  • Climate impacts
  • Coastal
  • Fisheries

Abstract

Decadal-scale climate variability and change can cause trends in oceanographic conditions that impact demographic rates. Rebuilding scenarios, therefore, developed assuming constant demographic rates may not be realistic. Winter flounder (Pseudopleuronectes americanus) is an important commercial and recreational species that has declined in the southern portion of its range despite reduced exploitation. Laboratory and mesocosm studies suggest that stock productivity is reduced under warmer conditions and that rebuilding to historical levels may not be possible. Our goal was to examine the rebuilding potential of winter flounder in the face of regional warming. We integrated winter temperature into a population model to estimate environmentally driven stock–recruitment parameters and projected the stock into the future under different climate and fishing scenarios. The inclusion of winter temperature had minor impacts on the estimates of current abundance, but provided greater understanding of the drivers of recruitment. Projections that included the environment suggest that rebuilding the stock to historical levels is unlikely. The integration of both fishing and the environment has the potential to provide more realistic expectations of future stock status.

Citation

Bell, R. J., Wood, A., Hare, J., Richardson, D., Manderson, J., & Miller, T. (2018). Rebuilding in the face of climate change. Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, 75(9), 1433–1444.

https://doi.org/10.1139/cjfas-2017-0085

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