It's Not Just About the Fish! Multiple Pathways of Climate Impacts on Fisheries

Climate change impacts on aquatic ecology and fish will affect the livelihoods of an estimated half billion people. However climate change will also disrupt the physical, social, economic and political context in which fisheries operate. When fisheries are recognised as linked social-ecological systems, it becomes clear that they will also be affected by a diverse range of indirect effects, for example migration of human populations, and impacts on coastal infrastructure. Meanwhile, regardless of climate change, fisheries are evolving rapidly due to changes in markets and governance and overexploitation, such that future climate impacts will be felt by fisheries that look very different from today’s. These various changes may interact with, amplify or even overwhelm biophysical impacts on fish ecology. These multiple impact pathways, and the complex responses of society make outcomes and vulnerabilities very hard to predict. Fisherfolk, economies, markets and fisheries governance regimes will increasingly need to be flexible and adaptive to adapt to these uncertain impacts.