Climate Impacts on Continental Shelf Fisheries

Continental shelf fisheries underpin the livelihoods of millions worldwide and supply a substantial proportion of global seafood. Rising sea temperatures, altered ocean stratification and deoxygenation are reshaping habitats on the shelf, with profound consequences for species distribution, growth rates and recruitment. Warming bottom waters can accelerate metabolic demands and modify life-history traits, resulting in shifts in size, age at maturity and seasonal movement patterns. Ocean acidification further threatens calcifying species, undermining shell formation and larval survival. Coupled with increased frequency of marine heatwaves and changes in upwelling intensity, these stressors drive range shifts as finfish and shellfish move poleward or into deeper waters in search of optimal conditions. Such redistributions can disrupt existing management frameworks, challenge quota allocations and heighten conflicts among competing uses, including emerging offshore wind infrastructure. Socio-economic consequences extend from reduced catch per unit effort to displacement of fishing communities. Integrating climate projections into adaptive management and developing resilient harvest strategies are critical to sustaining productivity and securing food security on continental shelves.

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Climate Impacts on Continental Shelf Fisheries publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in climate impacts on continental shelf fisheries across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Continental shelf: The gently sloping seabed extending from the shoreline to the shelf break, typically less than 200 m deep and supporting high biological productivity.

Bottom water temperature: The temperature of water adjacent to the seabed, which influences metabolic rates, growth and distribution of benthic and demersal species.

Range shift: The movement of species’ geographic distributions in response to changing environmental conditions, such as warming or altered habitat quality.

CMIP6: The Sixth Phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project, a framework for comparing climate models and providing standardised future climate projections.

Cold Pool: A seasonal mass of cold bottom water, often formed by spring surface cooling, that creates habitat barriers or refuges for temperature-sensitive species on the continental shelf.

References

1. Interactive Effects of Climate Change‐Induced Range Shifts and Wind Energy Development on Future Economic Conditions of the Atlantic Surfclam Fishery. Marine and Coastal Fisheries (2023).
2. Using LASSO regularization to project recruitment under CMIP6 climate scenarios in a coastal fishery with spatial oceanographic gradients. Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences (2023).
3. Overlap between the Mid-Atlantic Bight Cold Pool and offshore wind lease areas. ICES Journal of Marine Science (2023).