Climate change at the dinner table

Abstract

An innovative use of catch statistics shows that climate change has already influenced the composition of species in fisheries around the world, and thereby the fish that we eat. See Letter p.365 In a warming climate, we would expect the rise of warm-water marine species at the expense of those adapted to cooler waters. That characteristic pattern has now been detected in a study of catch composition in 52 large marine ecosystems between 1970 and 2006, a sample that includes most of the world's major fisheries. The authors develop an index, the MTC (mean temperature of the catch), calculated from the average inferred temperature preference of exploited species weighted by their annual catch. Over these years, global temperature preference increased at a rate of about 0.2 °C every decade, and the effects were even more pronounced in non-tropical areas. Taken together, these findings highlight the need to develop adaptation plans to minimize the impacts of climate change on the economy and food security of coastal communities.