Climate change, fisheries management and fishing aptitude affecting spatial and temporal distributions of the Barents Sea cod fishery

摘要

Climate change is expected to influence spatialand temporal distributions of fish stocks. The aim of thispaper is to compare climate change impact on a fisherywith other factors impacting the performance of fishingfleets. The fishery in question is the Northeast Arctic codfishery, a well-documented fishery where data on spatialand temporal distributions are available. A cellularautomata model is developed for the purpose ofmimicking possible distributional patterns and differentmanagement alternatives are studied under varyingassumptions on the fleets’ fishing aptitude. Fisheriesmanagement and fishing aptitude, also includingtechnological development and local knowledge, turn outto have the greatest impact on the spatial distribution of thefishing effort, when comparing the IPCC’s SRES A1Bscenario with repeated sequences of the currentenvironmental situation over a period of 45 years. In bothcases, the highest profits in the simulation period of45 years are obtained at low exploitation levels andmoderate fishing aptitude.