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  • Review Article
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ENSO impacts on marine ecosystems and fisheries in the tropical and South Atlantic

Nature Reviews Earth & Environment volume 7, pages 43–59 (2026) Cite this article

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Abstract

Tropical and South Atlantic marine ecosystems support fisheries that have vital environmental and socioeconomic importance. In this Review, we outline how the El Niño–Southern Oscillation — a Pacific mode of sea surface temperature variability — influences Atlantic fisheries via teleconnections and cascading linkages between physical, biogeochemical and ecological systems. Connections are driven by tropical pathways (involving changes in atmospheric stability associated with the Walker circulation and tropospheric warming) and extratropical pathways (involving the Pacific–South American and Pacific–North American teleconnection patterns). Depending on the location, these pathways modify rainfall and river discharge, winds and upwelling, or a combination of both, impacting salinity, nutrient availability, primary production and, thus, fish recruitment, biomass and catch. Fishery responses are strongly species dependent, reflecting variations in behaviour between species to environmental factors (such as temperature, oxygen, salinity, habitat and food availability). This regional variability and species dependency, coupled with strong non-stationarity, highlights the complexity of El Niño–Southern Oscillation impacts on Atlantic marine ecosystems. This historical signal is projected to weaken in the future. Enhanced observational systems and refined ecosystem models are urgently needed to enhance predictive capabilities, reduce societal impacts and improve sustainable management in these regions.

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Fig. 1: El Niño–Southern Oscillation teleconnection mechanism affecting the tropical and South Atlantic.
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Fig. 2: Non-stationarity of ENSO teleconnection impacts.
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Fig. 3: El Niño–Southern Oscillation impacts on marine ecosystems from physics to fish.
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Fig. 4: ENSO fishery impacts.
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Fig. 5: ENSO impacts on fisheries via physical drivers.
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Fig. 6: An overview of ENSO relationships with tropical and South Atlantic fisheries.
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Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful for support from the EU H2020 Project TRIATLAS under grant agreement no. 817578, the Spanish national projects PID2021-125806NB-I00 and TED2021-130106B-I00, the EU Horizon 2020 nextGEMS project (EU Horizon 2020 no. 101003470) and the UCM FEI-EU-25-02. M.M.R. is grateful for support from the Ramón y Cajal grant (RYC2022-038454-I, funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/ 501100011033 and co-funded by the FSE + European Union). R.A thanks CNPq–Brazil (302836/2025-0) for support. M.C., F.R. and J.S. thank Spanish projects PID2020-118097RB-I00 and PID2021-124831OA-I00 for support, with additional support from CEX2024-001494-S (AEI, 10.13039/501100011033) and 2021 SGR 00435. I.G. is grateful for support from the CONSCIENCE project (PID2023-146344OB-I00), funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (MICIU/AEI/10.13039/501100011033) and by FEDER-EU. H.C.N thanks Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) grant 456490637 for support. J.L.-P. and J.C.S.-G. acknowledge funding from Spanish projects CARMEN (PCI2021-122061-2B) and CARDUMEN (CNS2023-144704). L.G.’s work was supported in part by the National Research Foundation of South Africa (grant number 136481). M.M. thanks NOAA for support PMEL contribution no. 5562. This work is a contribution to the IJL TAPIOCA.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departamento de Física de la Tierra y Astrofísica, Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM), Madrid, Spain

    Belén Rodríguez-Fonseca, Elena Calvo-Miguélez, Lucia Montoya-Carramolino, Irene Polo, Marta Martín-Rey, Teresa Losada & Elsa Mohino

  2. Instituto de Geociencias IGEO (UCM-CSIC), Madrid, Spain

    Belén Rodríguez-Fonseca, Elena Calvo-Miguélez & Marta Martín-Rey

  3. Departamento de Oceanografía, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Florianópolis, Brazil

    Regina R. Rodrigues

  4. Department of Applied Physics I, Physical Oceanography Group, University of Málaga, Málaga, Spain

    Jorge López-Parages

  5. Institute of Biotechnology and Blue Development, University of Málaga, Málaga, Spain

    Jorge López-Parages & Jose Carlos Sánchez-Garrido

  6. Departamento de Matemática Aplicada, Escuela de Ingeniería Informática de Segovia, Universidad de Valladolid, Segovia, Spain

    Iñigo Gómara

  7. Geophysical Institute, University of Bergen/Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research, Bergen, Norway

    David Rivas, Filippa Fransner, Noel Keenlyside, Shunya Koseki & Juliano Ramanantsoa

  8. Departamento de Oceanografía Biológica, Centro de Investigación Científica y de Educación Superior de Ensenada, Ensenada, México

    David Rivas

  9. Earth Sciences Department, Barcelona Supercomputing Center, Barcelona, Spain

    Eleftheria Exarchou, Raffaele Bernardello & Verónica Martín-Gómez

  10. Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Center, Bergen, Norway

    Noel Keenlyside

  11. Nansen-Tutu Centre for Marine Environmental Research, Department of Oceanography, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa

    Noel Keenlyside & Mathieu Rouault

  12. MARBEC, University of Montpellier, CNRS, IFREMER, IRD, Sète, France

    Arnaud Bertrand

  13. Department of Biological Sciences, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa

    Lynne Shannon & Louise Gammage

  14. Marine and Antarctic Research Centre for Innovation and Sustainability, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa

    Louise Gammage

  15. Institut de Ciències del Mar, CSIC, Barcelona, Spain

    Francisco Ramírez, Camila Artana & Marta Coll

  16. Department of Applied Physics II, Physical Oceanography Group, University of Málaga, Málaga, Spain

    Jose Carlos Sánchez-Garrido

  17. Université de Toulouse, CNRS, Cerfacs, Toulouse, France

    Emilia Sánchez-Gómez & Marie Pierre Moine

  18. Ecopath International Initiative, Barcelona, Spain

    Jeroen Steenbeek & Marta Coll

  19. GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel, Kiel, Germany

    Joke Lübbecke, Peter Brandt, Rodrigue Anicet Imbol Koungue & Hyacinth Nnamchi

  20. Department of Oceanography, Federal University of Pernambuco, Recife, Brazil

    Moacyr Araujo & Ralf Schwamborn

  21. Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, Kiel University, Kiel, Germany

    Peter Brandt

  22. Center for Ocean and Society, Kiel University, Kiel, Germany

    Jörn O. Schmidt & Hans Sloterdijk

  23. WorldFish, Penang, Malaysia

    Jörn O. Schmidt

  24. Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, Natal, Brazil

    Ronaldo Angelini

  25. Institut fondamental d’Afrique noire, Laboratoire de Biologie marine, Cheikh Anta Diop University, UCAD, Dakar, Senegal

    Khady Diouf

  26. NORCE Norwegian Research Centre, Bergen, Norway

    Elaine McDonagh

  27. National Oceanography Centre, Southampton, UK

    Elaine McDonagh

  28. Instituto de Oceanografia, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande, Rio Grande, Brazil

    Jose Muelbert

  29. UFR des Sciences et Technologies Avancées, Université Amadou Mahtar Mbow, Dakar, Senegal

    Siny Ndoye

  30. Department of Oceanography, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa

    Mathieu Rouault

  31. Thünen Institute of Sea Fisheries, Bremerhaven, Germany

    Heino Fock

  32. Institute of Marine Research, Bergen, Norway

    Marek Ostrowski

  33. Laboratoire de Physique de l’Atmosphère et de l’Océan Siméon Fongang, Ecole Supérieure Polytechnique, Université Cheikh Anta Diop, Dakar, Senegal

    Amadou Thierno Gaye

  34. Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA

    Carlos R. Mechoso

  35. NOAA/Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, Seattle, WA, USA

    Michael J. McPhaden

  36. Frontier Science Center for Deep Ocean Multispheres and Earth System and Physical Oceanography Laboratory, Ocean University of China, Qingdao, China

    Wenju Cai

  37. State Key Laboratory of Loess and Quaternary Geology, Institute of Earth Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xi’an, China

    Wenju Cai

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  1. Belén Rodríguez-Fonseca
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Contributions

B.R.F. and R.R conceived the article. B.R.F. led writing with contributions from all authors. B.R.F., E.C.M. and L.M.C. created the figures and conducted all data analysis. I.P., M.M.R., T.L., J.L.P., I.G., L.S., D.R., E.E., F.F., F.R. and N.K. coordinated the presentation, writing and discussion for various sections. E.E., E.S. and D.R. conducted the model analysis. A.B., R.R., W.C. and M.M. revised the text.

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Correspondence to Belén Rodríguez-Fonseca.

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Nature Reviews Earth & Environment thanks Jose Carlos Baez, Patrick Lehodey and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Rodríguez-Fonseca, B., Calvo-Miguélez, E., Montoya-Carramolino, L. et al. ENSO impacts on marine ecosystems and fisheries in the tropical and South Atlantic. Nat Rev Earth Environ 7, 43–59 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43017-025-00742-2

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