CERES

Climate change will have a significant impact on the physical conditions of both marine and inland waters, as well as fish and shellfish distribution and productivity. We spoke to Professor Myron Peck of the CERES project about their work in investigating the physical changes that will occur as a result of climate change, and how CERES can help fisheries and aquaculture companies adapt and thrive.

Mussel farm, west coast of Ireland.

Photo: Thomas Doyle

Modelling the future of the seas The fisheries and aquaculture sectors are both key contributors to the European Blue economy, yet companies will need to adapt in the future as the impact of climate change on fish and shellfish becomes more apparent. This is a topic that lies at the core of the CERES project, an ECfunded project that brings together more than 200 participants from 26 different organisations, including both academic and commercial partners. “Most of our work so far has been around trying to understand the physical changes that are going to occur as a result of climate change, and to project those at a scale that’s relevant for the fisheries and aquaculture industries,” outlines Professor Myron Peck, the project’s Scientific Coordinator. In CERES, researchers are projecting future changes in European waters, using complex global climate models, which are then ‘downscaled’ to the regional level. “These models provide detailed information throughout the Mediterranean and the North-East Atlantic, as well as the Baltic, Barents and Norwegian Seas,” continues Professor Peck. “We are also working with freshwater models, looking at things such as riverflow and changes in water temperatures.”

These changes are likely to have a significant impact on the distribution and/or productivity of specific fish species in the future, which is a major concern for the fisheries and aquaculture industries. Temperature in particular is a major factor that determines where fish will be located.

“Within a tolerable range, temperature is a major determinant of where fish will be – and how fast well-fed fish will grow. If waters become too cold or too hot for too long then some local fish and shellfish resources may be lost,” explains Professor Peck. The effects of water temperature on growth rates is an important consideration for aquaculture companies in particular. “In a warmer future, an aquaculture company farming a fish at the northern (cold) limit of this fish’s geographical range may profit, while a company growing the

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same fish at the southern (warm) limit of this fish may experience losses. The same is true for the fishing industry,” says Professor Peck. “The effects of climate change on the same fish species are expected to vary, depending on where it’s fished or where it’s grown.”

The wider political and economic environment is another important consideration in terms of the future of the fisheries and aquaculture industries.

The way that total catches are allocated to different nations may be subject to change

following Britain’s exit from the EU for example, while there is still international disagreement on how to address climate change. “A lot of attention in CERES is being paid to the political changes that are occurring, so we’ve also developed a set of scenarios that accompany the physical changes.

That’s an important part of the project because it sets the scene for the biological modelling and the biological work,” explains Professor Peck. These scenarios contextualise climate change, giving companies in aquaculture and fisheries an insight

into how it will affect them, on a scale that brings home its importance to their operations. “A good example would be wind energy. Under a very green (less severe climate change) scenario of the future, it could be that we’ll see a proliferation of wind farms in the North Sea, leading to a further spatial squeeze on fisheries,” says Professor Peck.

The likely extent of future climate change is still a matter of debate, so Professor Peck and his colleagues in the project employ different physical climate change scenarios, under which they will examine effects on fisheries and aquaculture. The project addresses about 90 percent of the highvalue European aquaculture targets, including shellfish such as mussels and clams, along with more than half of the high-value targets for fisheries. “This includes Mediterranean species such as bluefin tuna, as well as species such as hake and small pelagics such as anchovies and sardines. In northern Europe, colder-water demersal / bottom-dwelling fish such as cod and haddock are examined,” says Professor Peck.

The likely extent of future climate change is still a matter of debate, so Professor Peck and his colleagues in the project have defined different scenarios, under which they will examine the effects of climate change on fisheries and aquaculture. “The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has defined regional concentration pathways (RCPs), which describe different scenario of future carbon emissions and, hence, global warming,” he explains.

The IPCC has defined four of these scenarios for future carbon emissions, each defining a specific emissions trajectory and subsequent radiative forcing - essentially the difference between the amount of sunlight absorbed by the earth’s surface and the amount reflected back into space, measured in watts per square metre (Wm2). These scenarios range from the worst case of 8.5 Wm2 down to 2.6 Wm2, which would actually represent a reduction in emissions over

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the next forty years. However, it currently looks like emissions levels are more in line with the 8.5 scenario, so now researchers in the CERES project are aiming to assess the likely impact of this on fish and shellfish resources. “We have data on physical carbon emissions, and they are used in models to project changes in sea surface temperature, sea bottom temperature, water currents, salinity, oxygen, and of course pH – the kinds of things that are going to affect fish and shellfish,” outlines Professor Peck. There is still uncertainty over how changes in these factors, in particular pH or ‘ocean acidification’, affect specific fish populations, so in the early stages of the project researchers did a literature review to assess the current state of knowledge. “We looked at more than 500 studies conducted on aquaculture and fisheries targets. When you start looking at studies on specific species, or even more general studies – you can see that temperature has been studied quite intensively,” says Professor Peck.

There have been far fewer studies, however, on the interaction between temperature and pH, and their combined impact on fish populations. CERES researchers have conducted some experiments and also investigated other areas to fill other gaps in knowledge. “Our project has done some work, for example, on shellfish, looking at the effect of temperature on growth in shellfish well fed on phytoplankton, compared to those that are poorly fed. We’ve also looked at the effects of temperature and salinity on the survival and growth of tuna larvae – we’ve conducted some very strategic experiments to gain some of the answers we need to make specific models work better,” outlines Professor Peck. Along with this research into the direct impact of climate change, the CERES project is also looking into the possible indirect effects, such as harmful algal blooms, disease, or jellyfish blooms. “Disease is relatively easy to model, because diseases respond to temperature. There may be reductions in some

Land-based trout farm in Turkey. Photo: Ferit Rad

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diseases due to warmer winter sea temperatures in the Mediterranean for example,” says Professor Peck. “Algal blooms are very difficult to model, they are linked to wind patterns in certain areas and specific oceanographic features.”

It is also very difficult to predict where a jellyfish bloom may occur, an event which can cause serious damage to fish farms. Large amounts of data have been gathered recently on where and when outbreaks occur, from which Professor Peck and his colleagues can investigate the physical factors behind these events and whether they can be accurately forecast. “We are looking at whether we can develop earlywarning tools to help farmers, so that they can take preventative measures. One option would be to put up a bubble curtain, to keep the jellyfish out,” he outlines. This research holds important

a deeper understanding of future changes, companies will be well placed to adapt to new circumstances. “We’d like to provide advice to fisheries companies targeting specific species, to say whether a particular species will continue to thrive in a certain area, or if they might want to consider changing their focus as fish populations shift,” says Professor Peck. A good example would be sea bass; while they were not historically found in large numbers in the North Sea, the population has increased ten-fold in around ten years.

“These types of changes in distribution are largely due to temperatures becoming more tolerable, and it becoming warm enough in northern areas for traditionally southern species to survive to survive. So you can have sea bass farms where you couldn’t before,” outlines Professor Peck.

“Cod is at the southern end of its distribution in

Most of our work so far has been around trying to understand the physical changes that are going to occur as a result of climate change, and to project those at a scale that’s relevant for the fisheries and aquaculture industries. implications for the future of the fisheries and aquaculture industries, so Professor Peck is keen to encourage companies to participate in the project’s work right from the early stages.

“The idea is to go to industry with these tools and conduct participatory science. We don’t want to just talk to fisheries and aquaculture companies at the end of the programme, but rather to involve them at the beginning, to tell them about our plans, what the models can do and what kinds of estimates they can provide, and hear what is most interesting and useful to them” he stresses.

New circumstances This is central to the project’s overall agenda, with Professor Peck and his colleagues in CERES aiming to provide effective advice to fisheries and aquaculture companies. With

Fisheries trawl in Greek waters. Photo: Dimitrios Damalas

the Irish Sea and the North Sea, and it will likely continue to become less productive in these areas in the future.”

The debate around climate change is often framed around longer-term challenges, yet aquaculture and fisheries companies by nature tend to prioritise more immediate issues as they seek to boost profits, while a degree of scepticism remains about climate change research. By working closely with industry, Professor Peck aims to heighten awareness among companies of how climate change may affect their operations and reinforce the continued importance of research in this area. “As scientists, I believe we need to work with industry. When you can link with industry and show how you can provide effective advice, I think it strengthens the credibility of science,” he says.

Mussel longline farming in the Limfjorden, Denmark.

Photo: Camille Saurel

EU Research

CERES The CERES project brings together researchers from 15 countries to address a wide

range of questions around the future impact of climate change on the European fisheries and aquaculture industries. We spoke to leaders of two workpackages within the project to get a deeper picture.

EU Research: What is your role within the CERES project?

Dr John Pinnegar: My main involvement is in leading a task for workpackage one. In one

part of that, my colleagues and I are producing future projections of temperature and climate around European seas but also trying to map out how politics and social attitudes might change.

We’re also trying to model how fish distribution will change over the next 100 years, using a whole suite of species distribution models and building on historical data. We know where the fish are now, and how that relates to temperature and salinity and other factors – we can forecast how temperature and salinity are going to change over the next 100 years, and from that predict where fish will move to.

Dr Ignacio A. Catalán Alemany: I’m the leader of workpackage 2, which deals with the effects of climate change on fisheries. We have three main tasks in this workpackage.

The first task is related to collecting information on direct effects of climate change related factors.

In the second task, we are analysing historical changes in species distribution, or species productivity. So we are trying to work out if the changes that have been detected can be attributed to any particular factor that is related to climate change.

Then in the third task, we try to integrate all this information into models that project future changes, under a series of scenarios.

EUR: Is the project also looking at indirect effects of temperature change on fish populations?

Dr John Pinnegar: Yes, we’re looking at the indirect effects of temperature on aquaculture and fisheries, including things like jellyfish outbreaks and harmful algal blooms.

Also, the projections are that as water warms up, its oxygen-carrying capacity will go down. With a lot of fish, their ability to grow and their metabolism is related to temperature and oxygen concentrations. So if the oxygen concentration drops, they’ve effectively got less resources available to put into growth and activity.

CERES Climate change and European aquatic RESources ceresproject.eu

Project Objectives

CERES advances a cause-and-effect understanding of how climate change will influence Europe’s most important fish and shellfish resources and the economic activities depending on them. It will provide tools and develop adaptive strategies allowing fisheries and aquaculture sectors and their governance to prepare for adverse changes or future benefits of climate change.

Project Funding

This project receives funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 678193 (CERES, Climate Change and European Aquatic Resources).

EU funding 5.6 million Euro.

Project Partners

There are a total of 26 project partners from 15 different countries. For full details, please visit the website.

Contact Details

Professor Myron Peck Institute of Marine Ecosystem and Fishery Science (IMF) University of Hamburg Olbersweg 24, D-22767 Hamburg, Germany T: +49 40 42 838 6600 E: myron.peck@uni-hamburg.de

EUR: Are you also considering how the fishing industry will adapt to these changes in future?

Dr John Pinnegar: In the project we’re doing vulnerability assessments, where we look at

Professor Myron Peck

European fishing fleets. We look at factors like the fish that they catch - whether they’re warm water or cold water species - where the ports are located, and try to rank the fishing ports and fleets of Europe in terms of their overall vulnerability.

EUR: This covers quite a wide range of fish species?

Dr Ignacio A. Catalán Alemany: In CERES we work with the concept of storylines, of which we have 27 – 4 from inland waters, 13 from marine fisheries, and 10 from marine aquaculture.

In each of these storylines we focus on particular species, areas and associated industries.

We look at traits we think are important for the population that we are studying. In terms of reproduction, depending on the species, we look at questions like whether there is an increase or decrease of the number of eggs produced as a response to projected varying conditions in temperature, or PH, or oxygen levels.

Myron Peck is professor of experimental biological oceanography at the University of Hamburg, Center for Earth Systems Research and Sustainability. His group’s research integrates ecophysiology of fish and zooplankton, field surveys of marine ecosystems as well as physical and biological modeling to help gain a cause-andeffect understanding of how climate change will influence ocean habitats.

Aquaculture farm in Portugal. Photo: Rui Gomes Ferreira

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