Foreword to a Special Issue on the International Workshop on Climate and Oceanic Fisheries

Abstract

As the human population approaches 7 billion and is expected to reach 9 billion by 2050, there will be much more pressure to increase food production, especially oceanic fisheries resources, which in regions like the Pacific provide essential protein and contribute to livelihoods. However, oceanic fisheries resources are considered close to full exploitation worldwide. These existing pressures are aggravated by climate through, for example, increasing ocean temperatures and ocean acidification, which are altering ocean ecosystems. This will demand the development and implementation of appropriate methods to address issues of vulnerability of oceanic fisheries to climate. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in its 4th Assessment Report has concluded that climate change and variability is likely to modify the productivity and distribution of oceanic fisheries, with serious consequences. The productivity of colder water species may be reduced in subtropical waters and the distribution of spawning areas and fisheries may be affected; their ability to extend their range further towards the poles or to deeper parts of the ocean is likely to be limited by the lack of availability of suitable habitat. The productivity of warmer water species may be enhanced in some subtropical waters and distribution of more tropical species may expand poleward. Increasing climate variability, together with the paucity of knowledge of climate change effects on regional fisheries, will make oceanic fisheries predictability and management more challenging. With this background, an International Workshop on Climate and Oceanic Fisheries was held in Rarotonga, Cook Islands from 3 to 5 October 2011. The event was jointly sponsored and organised by WMO, the Government of the Cook Islands, the Asia-Pacific Network for Global Change Research (APN), NOAA, the University of Auckland, the Australian Government (through CSIRO, the Bureau of Meteorology and AusAID) and the Secretariat Climatic Change (2013) 119:1–2 DOI 10.1007/s10584-012-0687-y