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Social-ecological vulnerability of forage fish and fishermen to climate change
Jameal F. Samhouri1, Lucas Earl2, Caren Barcelo3, Steven Bograd4, Ric Brodeur5,
Lorenzo Cianelli3, Emma Fuller4, Elliott Hazen5, Michael Jacox5, Isaac Kaplan1, Ryan
Rykaczewski7, Maria Dickinson Sheridan8 and Gregory D. Williams1
1
Conservation Biology Division, Northwest Fisheries Science Center, National Marine Fisheries Service,
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Seattle, WA, USA. E-mail:
[email protected]
2
Department of Geography, Clark University, Worcester, MA, USA
3
College of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR, USA
4
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA
5
Environmental Research Division, Southwest Fisheries Science Center, National Marine Fisheries Service,
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Pacific Grove, CA, USA
6
Fish Ecology Division, Northwest Fisheries Science Center, National Marine Fisheries Service, National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Newport, OR, USA
7
Department of Biological Sciences, Marine Science Program, University of South Carolina, Columbia,
SC, USA
8
Grantham Institute for Climate Change and Centre for Population Biology, Department of Biology,
Imperial College at Silwood Park, Ascot, Berkshire, UK
Marine forage species such as squid, anchovies, and sardines serve as dominant primary
consumers, targets of some of the largest fisheries in the world, and essential food for
higher trophic level species like marine mammals, seabirds, and larger fishes.
Contemporary climate change has already changed the distribution and abundance of
some of these species, and it has been challenging to predict such effects a priori. Using
projected changes in oceanographic climate, we assessed vulnerability of marine forage
species and dependent fishing vessels in the California Current. Based on expected
changes in the mean and variability of temperature and chlorophyll concentrations, and
species-specific sensitivity to these changes, we ranked the vulnerability of 15 forage
species, all of which are fisheries targets. We used this measure of vulnerability of each
stock as a proxy for the exposure of fishing vessels that target them to climate change. By
coupling ecological vulnerability measure to estimates of social vulnerability—stemming
from the financial dependence of fishing vessels on each stock and the potential for the
vessels to adapt by targeting alternative stocks—we provide an integrated assessment of
how climate change may differentially affect fishing vessels that target forage species.