Management of transboundary and straddling fish stocks in the Northeast Atlantic in view of climate‐induced shifts in spatial distribution

Peter Gullestad,Olav Sigurd Kjesbu,Svein Sundby

doi:10.1111/faf.12485

Abstract

AbstractThe introduction of 200 n.m. exclusive economic zones (EEZs) in the late 1970s required increased collaboration among neighbouring coastal states to manage transboundary and straddling fish stocks. The established agreements ranged from bilateral to multilateral, including high‐seas components, as appropriate. However, the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea does not specify how quotas of stocks crossing EEZs should be allocated, nor was it written for topical scenarios, such as climate change with poleward distribution shifts that differ across species. The productive Northeast Atlantic is a hot spot for such shifts, implying that scientific knowledge about zonal distribution is crucial in quota negotiations. This diverges from earlier, although still valid, agreements that were predominately based on political decisions or historical distribution of catches. The bilateral allocations for Barents Sea and North Sea cod remain robust after 40 years, but the management situation for widely distributed stocks, as Northeast Atlantic mackerel and Norwegian spring‐spawning herring, appears challenging, with no recent overall agreements. Contrarily, quotas of Northern hake are, so far, unilaterally set by the EU despite the stock's expansion beyond EU waters into the northern North Sea. Negotiations following the introduction of EEZs were undertaken at the end of the last cooler Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) period, that is, with stock distributions generally in a southerly mode. Hence, today's lack of management consensus for several widely distributed fish stocks typically relates to more northerly distributions attributed to the global anthropogenic signal accelerating the spatial effect of the current warmer AMO.

Highlights

Fisheries management operates at scales ranging from local to multinational schemes
Transboundary and straddling stocks are overrepresented among overfished stocks, those associated with high seas (Ye et al, 2013)
An intrinsic part of the sustainable development in the Northeast Atlantic has been the continuing efforts from the late 1980s to reach coastal state agreements for stocks occurring across several exclusive economic zones (EEZs), including stocks that straddle the high seas (Gullestad et al, 2014) (Figure 1)

Summary

| INTRODUCTION

Fisheries management operates at scales ranging from local to multinational schemes This is because marine organisms display large diversity in their habitats—from stocks retained within coastal or reef areas to ocean basin-wide distributions. ICCAT considers the entire Atlantic Ocean and consists of 48 member nations (ICCAT, 2019) Another well-known multilateral body is the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR), which was founded in 1982 by 23 member nations (CCAMLR, 2019; Constable, 2002). EEZs simplified the management of spatially confined (local) fish stocks but mandated strengthened international management cooperation regarding broadly distributed stocks Examples of such stocks include those that utilize distant habitat areas across life phases, from spawning migration, denatant drift of offspring to nursery grounds and adult feeding migrations (Harden Jones, 1968; Petitgas et al, 2013; Secor, 2002). Such network simulations demonstrate fisheries as interconnected, the actual allocation of quota refers to life stages showing active rather than passive displacements, often with a pronounced seasonal pattern (e.g., Nøttestad et al, 2016)

INTRODUCTION

DISCUSSION

Findings

| DISCUSSION