Abstract
The aim of this study is to assess the climate effects on fisheries from a bottom-up approach based on fishers’ fishing experience, knowledge, and perceptions. To perform this task, a social vulnerability assessment was conducted in two different fishing areas: one in Spain and the other one in Turkey. The vulnerability was measured using the collected data and information through a structured questionnaire, and surveys were carried out among fishers in the Castelló (Spain) and the Aegean Sea (Turkey) between 2018 and 2019. Overall, the results indicated that the two studied regions have a moderate to high vulnerability and that the Aegean Sea was slightly more vulnerable than Castelló. It was also found that storms and temperature are the main climatic stressors that affect the fishing sector, and the economic indicators such as revenue from fishing in both regions showed high degrees of sensitivity. To reduce the vulnerability to climate change, adaptive measures should be implemented while taking into consideration the specific socio-economic and institutional characteristics of each region. In conclusion, the effects of climate change on the fishing sector and their social vulnerability are diverse. Consequently, there is no single climate measure that can minimize the vulnerability of fishing sectors in different regions.
Highlights
Coastal and marine ecosystems provide a variety of goods and services, including provisioning, supporting, regulating, and cultural services[1]
While the top-down approaches were closely associated with the climate change impact assessment and emerged in a large part from the risk/hazard analysis on the vulnerability, the bottom-up approaches were closely associated with the political economy/ecology tradition and the livelihoods perspective on vulnerability[7]
Studies that assess the synergistic effects of both climate change and fishing on the fishery resources and ecosystem functioning in the Mediterranean Sea are r are[33], and very limited studies have projected the consequences of climate change on marine ecosystems in an integrated way in the Mediterranean[14,34]
Summary
Coastal and marine ecosystems provide a variety of goods and services, including provisioning, supporting, regulating, and cultural services[1]. The warming temperatures have pushed tropical species to higher latitudes, so marine species have declined in warm-water regions and increased in cold-water polar r egions[6] These changes affect the availability of resources to fisheries, which puts fishing communities at a high risk of climate change. The effects of climate change on fishing practices and the adaptive capacities of fisheries have become significant factors for implementing management measures and for taking actions to cope with the effects of climate change[10]. The fish resources in the Mediterranean Sea have been rapidly declining due to a combination of overfishing, habitat destruction, marine pollution, invasive species, and climate change[19,20,21]. The economic loss of fishers in the Eastern Mediterranean, which is mainly caused by the silver-cheeked toadfish (Lagocephalus sceleratus), has been increasing over the years[22,23,24]
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