Abstract
Gadus morhua (Atlantic cod) stocks in the Barents Sea are currently at levels not seen since the 1950s. Causes for the population increase last century, and understanding of whether such large numbers will be maintained in the future, are unclear. To explore this, we digitised and interrogated historical cod catch and diet datasets from the Barents Sea. Seventeen years of catch data and 12 years of prey data spanning 1930–1959 cover unexplored spatial and temporal ranges, and importantly capture the end of a previous warm period, when temperatures were similar to those currently being experienced. This study aimed to evaluate cod catch per unit effort and prey frequency in relation to spatial, temporal and environmental variables. There was substantial spatio-temporal heterogeneity in catches through the time series. The highest catches were generally in the 1930s and 1940s, although at some localities more cod were recorded late in the 1950s. Generalized Additive Models showed that environmental, spatial and temporal variables are all valuable descriptors of cod catches, with the highest occurring from 15–45°E longitude and 73–77°N latitude, at bottom temperatures between 2 and 4°C and at depths between 150 and 250 m. Cod diets were highly variable during the study period, with frequent changes in the relative frequencies of different prey species, particularly Mallotus villosus (capelin). Environmental variables were particularly good at describing the importance of capelin and Clupea harengus (herring) in the diet. These new analyses support existing knowledge about how the ecology of the region is controlled by climatic variability. When viewed in combination with more recent data, these historical relationships will be valuable in forecasting the future of Barents Sea fisheries, and in understanding how environments and ecosystems may respond.
Highlights
Many studies predict that climate change will modify ecosystems in the future
Data stations were not gridded according to a statistically stratified design, rather they were often focussed on areas where high catches were known to be found and data gathered was more akin to commercial cod catch per unit effort (CPUE) than to traditional scientific abundance measures
South of Svalbard, where cod were typically caught during spring, summer and autumn, the highest absolute catches were recorded in the 1930–1940s, 1950, 1954 and 1955, while to the west of the archipelago the highest catches were recorded later in the time series, in 1958 and 1959
Summary
Many studies predict that climate change will modify ecosystems in the future Historical data are essential for understanding how environmental factors influence ecosystems over long periods of time and for training models that predict the effects of future climatic changes. Understanding how ecosystems have been modified by past environmental change informs future projections. Scientists have known for over a century that the cod stock in the region can fluctuate greatly [19,20], and research in the early 20th century attributed fluctuations to warming in the Barents Sea and the Arctic Researchers appreciated the importance of changing environmental conditions; for example an ICES Special Scientific Meeting assessed how climatic changes relate to fluctuations in northern fish stocks [24], leading to a number of publications focusing on the issue [25,26,27,28,29]
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