Funded
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- Objectives
- Produce forecasted dynamic species and vessel distributions under different anomaly and climate change scenarios in the near, mid and long-term based on changing environmental drivers.
- Quantify shifts in overlap among species and vessels given shifting habitat for both.
- Understand the impact of climate anomalies, changing oceanographic conditions and future scenarios on forecasted dynamic species and vessel distributions with a specific focus on forecast skill and accounting for uncertainty.
- Background
- Balancing short, medium and long-term sustainability, food security and economic objectives in a changing environment is a challenge to fisheries management.
- Current conservation measures have not been specifically designed to adapt to a changing environment, particularly in the medium-long term.
- Previous research has documented distributional shifts of pelagic predators and fishing effort in response to climate-driven changes, but no particular study has been conducted for the tropical tuna and bycatch species in the EPO.
- A better understanding of climate-induced shifts in the spatial distribution of target and non-target species is needed to develop climate-resilient fisheries.
- Relevance for management
- Understanding tuna stocks and fishers’ response to medium and long-term changing ocean conditions is important to develop subsequent policy and management strategies and ensure climate-resilient fisheries in the EPO.
- Duration
- 24 months, extended to 36 months due to COVID-19
- Workplan and status
- 2021 – Develop vessel distributions models; gather model outputs from target species; assemble projected environmental data.
- 2022 – Develop forecasted target and vessel distributions; target species and vessels models validation; gather distribution model outputs from bycatch species; develop forecasted bycatch distributions; bycatch models validations.
- 2023 – preparation of dissemination material; present at the SAC, the Bycatch WG and other IATTC meetings of interest.
- External collaborators
- San Diego State University-Conservation Ecology Lab, The Ocean Conservancy
- Deliverables
- A series of climate change medium and long-term projected dynamic species distributions for both target and non-target species and vessels.
- Compilation of reliable environmental data for different climate scenarios.
- Web-based tools and forecast products. Open source code to allow replication.
- Dissemination material, including documents and presentations for the Scientific Advisory Committee and the Bycatch working Group in 2021 and 2022.
- Updated date: 01 May 2024
- Progress summary for the reporting period
- Several coordination and discussion meetings have been conducted with the FaCet (Fisheries and Climate Toolkit) group in 2020, and 2021, and 2022.
- In house produced dynamic size-specific tropical tuna species distribution models (e.g. SAC-10 INF-D) have been shared with collaborators, which will be used as a baseline to assess the impact of climate change on species’ future distribution. Similar methods are expected to be applied to some key bycatch species.
- Dynamic vessel distribution models are being created to infer fleet’s response to species distribution changes.
- A profound investigation on potential data sources for different climate scenarios is being conducted.
- A better understanding and assessment of impacts other type of large-scale environmental processes will be explored, in particular, the effect of marine heatwaves on species distribution and fleet’s productivity and behavior.
- The integration of online resources and platforms is being discussed with partners to better disseminate projects results and methods.
- The project has been now taken over by the permanent IATTC staff.
- Challenges and key lessons learnt
- The uncertainty associated with climate projections may need to be considered in detail, and solutions explored to find the best way to incorporate it in the final products.
- A website has been created, here.
- A presentation was given at AGU 2020
- Comments
- Similar Pacific-wide efforts are being explored, which need to be coordinated, and possibly expanded with existing projects at the IATTC.