Vulnerability assessment of Korean fisheries to climate change

Abstract

Climate change is expected to cause changes in marine biota and ecosystems, thereby directly affecting fishery production. To establish policies to respond to climate change, the importance of climate change vulnerability assessments is growing. In South Korea, annual fishery production has decreased since 1986, and climate change has caused changes in compositions of species and the ecological structure. Therefore, we assessed the vulnerability to climate change for 36 species with sensitivity and exposure. Based on this result, the vulnerability of 24 fisheries to climate change was evaluated. In this study, as exposure factors, we considered relationships between future seawater temperatures and spawning/habitat temperature of each species. Species with high scores both in sensitivity attributes and climate exposure factors are evaluated as highly vulnerable species and fisheries with high catch ratios of such species are assessed to be relatively more vulnerable. Hence, it is required to prioritize fisheries with high catch ratios of relatively vulnerable species when establishing policies to manage offshore and coastal fisheries in Korea.