Climate change is undeniably having an impact on where certain seafood species are located, and its exact effects are still being researched.
Research being done in how stocks are shifting varies. Some NOAA studies have predicted high-value groundfish species will migrate toward deeper offshore waters on the west coast of the U.S., while others are pointing out the risks it poses to global blue food production. Despite those risks, a panel covering seafood sourcing amid climate change at the Global Seafood Market Conference – which ran from 23 to 25 January in Orlando, Florida, U.S.A. – said the seafood industry can meet the challenges and even weather them better than other protein industries.
According to NOAA Fisheries Senior Advisor for Seafood Strategy Michael Rubino, as climate change continues to have an impact, the seafood industry can expect to see a few different types of changes. Some, he said, will be gradual, while some will be abrupt changes caused by major weather events occurring with greater intensity and frequency.
NOAA, Rubino said, is working to make sense of what is happening in the water and develop plans so that it can address those changes.
“This has been really studied over the past few years as a sort of precursor of what may happen in the future, along with the types of management changes that need to be made as we go along,” Rubino said.
The next step for NOAA is to ...
Photo by Chris Chase/SeafoodSource
