CLIMARES

During the 21st century, Northeast Atlantic may be deeply affected by climate change, which may accelerate the expansion of warm-water fishes and emphasise the decline of colder-water species that will not be able to move to cooler places. Stocks of exploited marine species may therefore be significantly altered. Conversely, other species (e.g non-indigenous species) could expand their range if temperature rises and offer new business opportunities.

Despite the ecological importance of Northeast Atlantic marine ecosystems and their financial resources, consequences of changes in harvested species remain unclear. While models and scenarios can provide an effective means of addressing relationships between nature, nature’s benefit to people and quality of life, results from predictive methods are still questionable because of the different sources of uncertainties.

The CLIMARES project aims to improve our estimates of the effects of climate change on exploited marine resources in order to move towards rational management of stocks and to mitigate the socio-economic impacts of global change. The project has 3 main objectives:

Objective 1: To project the redistribution of the main exploited marine resources in the North-East Atlantic over the 21st century, with an emphasis on integrating and quantifying the different sources of uncertainty. Emphasis will be given to considering the influence of biotic interactions.

Objective 2: To assess the economic consequences of the expected redistribution of exploited marine resources in the North-East Atlantic as a consequence of climate change.

Objective 3: To propose spatial planning scenarios in relation to the expected redistribution of exploited marine resources in the North-East Atlantic, and to estimate the resilience of existing conservation strategies, with the ultimate aim of providing sustainable management scenarios.