Impacts of climate change on UK Seas

The Marine Climate Impacts Partnership publishes an annual report card with information about the impacts of climate change on a wide range of aspects of the marine ecosystem including on fish and fisheries communities. It is written by leading UK marine and climate scientists and undergoes a peer review process. The report card is a summary of more detailed backing documents which are available on line.

2010-2011’s report has some key findings in relation to fish and fisheries.

Some fish distributions have moved northwards over the past 30 years by distances ranging from around 50 to 400km, with coldwater species such as monkfish and snake blenny moving the furthest.
Increasing sea temperatures may have the potential to increase the geographic range of some harmful algal bloom species associated with Paralytic Shellfish Poisoning (PSP) events.
The full report and research papers can be found attached below.

2009’s report looks at Ecosystem Linkages, covering the impacts of CO2 and climate change on the links between different aspects of the ecosystem. It can be found attached below.

2008’s report card covers the impacts of climate change on a number of sections of the marine environment. Here are some of the key findings which relate to fish and fisheries.
Climate change will have far-reaching impacts on the dynamics of fish populations.
A 1,000-km northward shift of warmer-water plankton, with a similar retreat of colder-water plankton, has been observed in the north-east Atlantic over the past 50 years, as the seas around the UK have become warmer.
In the North Sea, the population of the important cold-water zooplankton species Calanus finmarchicus has declined in biomass by 70% since the 1960s.

Further details on this report can be found attached below.

Note that Calanus fin. is a key prey species for many commercial fish stocks, including cod juveniles. A paper in Nature on the importance of Calanus fin. for cod is available here.
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