Mapping the climate risk for European fisheries

With fires, floods, storms surges, and heatwaves becoming dismayingly common because of climate change, how can societies adapt to these and further changes? In this context, fisheries have emerged as the proverbial canary in the coalmine and an important test case for the rest of society. The reason is, in part, because the success or failure of fisheries and the communities supported by them is deeply entwined with the state of ocean ecosystems, and because ocean life is often responding faster and more dramatically to the impacts of climate change than are ecosystems on land. Fisheries are incredibly diverse, however, and a major challenge is to understand where to target adaptation efforts. In their paper, Payne et al. (1) provide an especially detailed social–ecological roadmap by examining climate risk to fisheries in Europe. European fisheries provide fascinating examples for climate adaptation. From a climate risk perspective, these fisheries have long been overlooked, in part because European countries rely relatively little on fisheries for food, jobs, or economic value (2). However, fisheries play an outsize role in European society, far beyond their purely utilitarian role in food security, employment, or national economies. This importance was illustrated not least by the fact that fisheries were one of the final sticking points in Brexit negotiations. A subsequent dispute over fishing rights around the island of Jersey quickly escalated, with French and English warships deployed to the area in May 2021. Earlier this century, a dispute over mackerel between the European Union (EU), Iceland, and other countries that has been linked to climate impacts subsequently spilled over into a trade war (3). European fisheries encompass an impressive diversity, from subtropical to Arctic ecosystems and from fleets of small artisanal boats to a 144-m supertrawler. Although much of the climate adaptation attention has rightly focused … [↵][1] 1Email: malin.pinsky{at}rutgers.edu. [1]: #xref-corresp-1-1