SEAwise Report on effects of environmental and ecological factors on stock productivity for online tool

The SEAwise project works to deliver a fully operational tool that will allow fishers, managers, and policy makers to easily apply Ecosystem Based Fisheries Management. The ecosystem approach to fisheries management requires the consideration of commercial species as components of an ecosystem and the acknowledgement of the links between their productivity and the surrounding environment.

This SEAwise report identifies how environmental drivers affect fish productivity through reproduction and recruitment, growth, maturity and natural mortality. On the basis of literature and previous knowledge, the productivity of 55 stocks was investigated using mainly statistical modelling approaches. New relationships describing the effect of environment on reproduction, growth or maturity was demonstrated for 46 stocks, and for 22 of them, environmentally mediated productivity processes were introduced in the SEAwise suite of Management Strategy Evaluation models used in WP6. The development of these stocks under climate change was predicted in single species models to demonstrate the effect of integrating the impact of environmental drivers on the predicted stock productivity, as well as the effect of different environmental scenarios, all other things being equal.

Overall, stock productivity tended to decline under climate change: Stock projections under climate change scenarios show decreased biomasses and catch (when compared to a no climate change scenario) for 10 stocks, increased biomasses and catch for 5 stocks, and no or unclear signals for 4 stocks.

Read more about the SEAwise project at https://seawiseproject.org/