Climate Impacts on Marine Ecosystems and Fisheries

Climate change is reshaping marine ecosystems and the fisheries they support through multiple interacting stressors. Rising ocean temperatures drive shifts in species distributions, often towards higher latitudes and deeper waters, altering community composition and mixing historical assemblages. Ocean acidification and deoxygenation further undermine calcifying organisms and intensify habitat compression, with cascading effects on trophic networks. Changing phenology—such as earlier plankton blooms or delayed fish migrations—can decouple predator–prey interactions and disrupt recruitment success. In regions experiencing rapid warming, local oceanography can amplify or mitigate these trends, creating hotspots of vulnerability or refugia. Socio-economic systems are equally affected: traditional fishing grounds may yield reduced catches or novel species, compelling managers to adopt climate-ready strategies. Advances in ensemble modelling, high-resolution mapping, and life history analyses support adaptive management, yet substantial uncertainties remain in scaling global projections to local fisheries. Collaborative approaches that integrate ecological forecasting with stakeholder knowledge are essential to sustain fishery productivity and community resilience in a changing climate.

Research from Nature Portfolio

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Climate Impacts on Marine Ecosystems and Fisheries publication trend

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

Technical terms

Ocean acidification: The reduction in seawater pH due to uptake of anthropogenic carbon dioxide, affecting calcifying organisms and physiological processes.

Climate velocity: The speed and direction at which temperature isotherms move across the seascape, driving shifts in species distributions.

Phenology: The timing of recurring biological events, such as spawning or plankton blooms, and its alteration under changing climatic conditions.

Thermal habitat: The range of water temperatures within which a species can survive, grow, and reproduce, defining its ecological niche.

Life history change: Alterations in growth, maturation, reproduction or survival patterns of organisms in response to environmental drivers.

References

1. Industry and conservation goals are complementary for the most valuable fishery in the United States under climate‐driven life history changes. Conservation Letters (2023).
2. It’s about time: A synthesis of changing phenology in the Gulf of Maine ecosystem. Fisheries Oceanography (2019).
3. Climate impacts on the Gulf of Maine ecosystemA review of observed and expected changes in 2050 from rising temperatures. Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene (2021).
4. The Effects of Sub-Regional Climate Velocity on the Distribution and Spatial Extent of Marine Species Assemblages. PLOS ONE (2016).
5. The brighter side of climate change: How local oceanography amplified a lobster boom in the Gulf of Maine. Global Change Biology (2019).
6. An ensemble high‐resolution projection of changes in the future habitat of American lobster and sea scallop in the Northeast US continental shelf. Diversity and Distributions (2020).
7. Climate Change Vulnerability of American Lobster Fishing Communities in Atlantic Canada. Frontiers in Marine Science (2019).