Journal article · Ahead of Print article
Are we ready to track climate-driven shifts in marine species across international boundaries? - A global survey of scientific bottom trawl data
Section for Ecosystem based Marine Management, National Institute of Aquatic Resources, Technical University of Denmark1
Institut français de recherche pour l'exploitation de la mer2
Centre for Applied Fisheries Research3
The Nature Conservancy4
The Steinhardt Museum of Natural History5
Wageningen Marine Research6
National Center of Fisheries Sciences of Boussoura7
Instituto del Mar del Peru8
National Institute of Fisheries Science9
Greenland Institute of Natural Resources10
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration11
National Institute of Aquatic Resources, Technical University of Denmark12
Universidad de Concepción13
Oceanographic Research Center of Dakar-Thiaroye14
University of Haifa15
Møreforsking AS16
Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment17
Johann Heinrich von Thunen Institute18
Narragansett Laboratory19
Universidad Nacional de Colombia20
L'Institut Agro21
GRECO22
Wageningen University & Research23
Ministry of Fisheries and Marine Resources24
Fishwell Consulting Pty Ltd25
Institut Mauritanien de Recherches Océanographiques et des Pêches26
Russian Federal Research Institute of Fisheries and Oceanography27
Centre for Ocean Life, National Institute of Aquatic Resources, Technical University of Denmark28
Instituto Espanol de Oceanografia29
Muséum national d'histoire naturelle30
Institut National de Recherche Halieutique31
Dalhousie University32
Institute of Fishing Resources33
University of Tromsø – The Arctic University of Norway34
University of Ghana35
NIWA36
Alaska Fisheries Science Center37
National School of Marine Science and Coastal Management38
Marine and Freshwater Research Institute39
Israel Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development40
Faroe Marine Research Institute41
Israel Oceanographic & Limnological Research Ltd.42
Hellenic Centre for Marine Research43
University of Patras44
Fisheries and Oceans Canada45
Tel Aviv University46
DG Joint Research Centre47
Australian Antarctic Division48
Université de Montpellier49
Rutgers - The State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick50
Ministry of Fisheries and Aquaculture Development51
Natural Resources Department52
...and 42 moreMarine biota is redistributing at a rapid pace in response to climate change and shifting seascapes. While changes in fish populations and community structure threaten the sustainability of fisheries, our capacity to adapt by tracking and projecting marine species remains a challenge due to data discontinuities in biological observations, lack of data availability, and mismatch between data and real species distributions.
To assess the extent of this challenge, we review the global status and accessibility of ongoing scientific bottom trawl surveys. In total, we gathered metadata for 283,925 samples from 95 surveys conducted regularly from 2001 to 2019. 59% of the metadata collected are not publicly available, highlighting that the availability of data is the most important challenge to assess species redistributions under global climate change.
We further found that single surveys do not cover the full range of the main commercial demersal fish species and that an average of 18 surveys is needed to cover at least 50% of species ranges, demonstrating the importance of combining multiple surveys to evaluate species range shifts. We assess the potential for combining surveys to track transboundary species redistributions and show that differences in sampling schemes and inconsistency in sampling can be overcome with vector autoregressive spatio-temporal modeling to follow species density redistributions.
In light of our global assessment, we establish a framework for improving the management and conservation of transboundary and migrating marine demersal species. We provide directions to improve data availability and encourage countries to share survey data, to assess species vulnerabilities, and to support management adaptation in a time of climate-driven ocean changes.
