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Global warming is already affecting the oceans through changes in water temperature, acidification, oxygen content and sea level rise, amongst many others. These changes are having multiple effects on marine species worldwide, with subsequent impacts on marine fisheries, peoples' livelihoods and food security. This work presents a review of the recent literature on the current and projected impacts of climate change on Canada's Pacific marine ecosystem. We find that there is an increasing number of studies in British Columbia focusing on changes in ocean conditions and marine species responses under climate change, including an emerging literature on the socio-economic impacts of these changes considered to be a knowledge gap. According to the literature, it is well established that ocean temperatures are increasing over the long-term, especially, in southern areas of British Columbia. Warming trends are increasing in the spring and are strongest in summer. However, there are important uncertainties regarding other climate drivers, such as oxygen concentration and acidification, stemming mainly from the insufficiency of data. Pacific salmon, elasmobranchs, invertebrates and rockfishes are amongst the most vulnerable species groups to climate change in British Columbia. Also, shifts in stock distribution and fish abundance under climate change may have a significant impact on fish supply affecting the livelihoods and food security of some British Columbians. The magnitude of these impacts is likely to vary according to a latitudinal gradient, with southern coastal areas being more affected than northern and central areas; challenging multiple areas of governance, such as equity and fishing access amongst First Nations; and institutional arrangements for transboundary stocks between the U.S. and Canada.

Cecilia Engler-Palma of the OceanCanada Law and Policy Working Group has been invited to participate in the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) Working Group on Environmental Interactions of Aquaculture for a term of 3 years. Its first meeting was in December 2018.

Local support is important for the longevity of conservation initiatives. The literature suggests that perceptions of ecological effectiveness, social impacts, and good governance will influence levels of local support for conservation. This paper examines these relationships using data from a survey of small‐scale fishermen in 11 marine protected areas from six countries in the Mediterranean Sea. The survey queried small‐scale fishermen regarding perceptions and support for conservation. We constructed composite scores for three categories of perceptions—ecological effectiveness, social impacts, and good governance—and tested the relationship with levels of support using ordinal regression models. While all three factors were positively correlated with support for conservation, perceptions of good governance and social impacts were stronger predictors of increasing support. These findings suggest that employing good governance processes and managing social impacts may be more important than ecological effectiveness for maintaining local support for conservation. (Full publication)

Article originally posted at oceana.ca.

Yesterday, Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) announced that they will close the directed Atlantic cod fishery on the Scotian Shelf/Bay of Fundy but will maintain the existing harvest levels of 825 tonnes as bycatch. This goes against DFO’s own policy to keep all sources of fishing mortality to the lowest possible level.

Join us for a WATCH PARTY in the Hakai Node!

On Thursday, March 14 at 10:00 am PT, Rashid Sumaila and William Cheung from the University of British Columbia will discuss their latest paper: “Benefit of Paris Agreement to ocean life, economies, and people” with Science Advances via Facebook Live. This page will be updated with the Facebook link as soon as it is available.

OCEANCANADA NEWS​

Rashid Sumaila, OceanCanada Director, has received the 2018 UBC President’s Award for Public Education Through Media. This award celebrates active and creative sharing of research expertise through news media. Rashid is highly visible to the public through various types of media: he is regularly mentioned in popular news articles, appears in many news programs geared toward the public, and often gives talks on current issues in the news to general audiences. Congratulations, Rashid! Read more.

Analysis that link hydrological processes with oceanographic dispersion offer a promising approach for assessing impacts of land-based activities on marine ecosystems. However, such an analysis has not yet been customised to quantify specific pressures from mining activities on marine biodiversity including those from spillages resulting from tailing dam failure. Here, using a Brazilian catchment in which a tailing dam collapsed (Doce river) as a case study, we provide a modelling approach to assess the impacts on key ecosystems and marine protected areas subjected to two exposure regimes: (i) a pulse disturbance event for the period 2015–2016, following the immediate release of sediments after dam burst, which witnessed an average increase of 88% in sediment exports; and (ii) a press disturbance phase for the period 2017–2029, when impacts are sustained over time by sediments along the river's course. We integrated four components into impact assessments: hydrological modelling, coastal-circulation modelling, ecosystem mapping, and biological sensitivities. The results showed that pulse disturbance causes sharp increases in the amount of sediments entering the coastal area, exposing key sensitive ecosystems to pollution (e.g. rhodolith beds), highlighting an urgent need for developing restoration strategies for these areas. The intensity of impacts will diminish over time but the total area of sensitive ecosystems at risk are predicted to be enlarged. We determined monitoring and restoration priorities by evaluating and comparing the extent to which sensitive ecosystems within marine protected areas were exposed to disturbances. The information obtained in this study will allow the optimization of recovery efforts in the marine area affected, and valuation of ecosystem services lost. (Full publication)

I provide a selected survey of the literature on the effects of climate change on the biophysics and ecology of marine ecosystems and the fisheries that depend on them. First, I discuss the effects of warming, ocean acidification and deoxygenation on marine life. Second, I describe how the projected changes in the biophysics of the ocean is likely to affect the economics and management of ocean fisheries. (Full publication)

In complex dynamic systems like fisheries, recognizing fishing-effort responses is as critical as understanding the biology of the exploited species for making sensible management decisions. In highly seasonal fisheries, it is theoretically possible for an “interannual bionomic equilibrium” to develop under open-access, where fleet dynamics may result in balanced year-to-year harvesting due to decreasing income per time fishing as biomass declines, without endangering the sustainability of the stock. However, in some conditions, this interannual bionomic equilibrium can be pathologically low leading to overfishing and amplification of extinction risks. Here we draw three cases from short-lived and fast-growing invertebrate fisheries to illustrate two distinct effort response dynamics: (a) fishing-effort responses that lead to healthy interannual bionomic equilibrium; and (b) fishing-effort responses in which fishing remains profitable over the entire season, hence, allowing fishing fleets to maintain a high fishing-effort throughout the season. Analyzing long-term within-year catch and effort data, we found that both Gulf of Mexico shrimp and North Territory giant crab fisheries are likely currently at healthy interannual bionomic equilibria, while certain socioeconomic drivers enable the Kuwait shrimp fishery to maintain high effort through the entire shrimping season. Our findings suggest that input controls are less effective in short-lived invertebrate fisheries that exhibit fishing-effort proportional to declining stock abundance. Conversely, if not regulated, the abundance-insensitive fishing-effort response could pose biological risks and habitat destruction. Therefore, we emphasize that in common-property seasonal fisheries, fishing-effort responses be scrutinized to distinguish factors that might undermine resource sustainability.

Magazine article, see link for detail.