A new decision-making framework designed by an international team of fisheries researchers can help fisheries bolster their ability to adapt to a warming world. The tool, said marine ecologist Jacob Eurich at UC Santa Barbara’s National Center for Ecological Analysis & Synthesis (NCEAS),(link is external) is meant to take a lot of the guesswork out of finding resilience in a time of climate change.
“Our goal is to be able to throw any fishery in this framework and pull out the bright spots and dark spots,” Eurich said. “And the idea is that a stakeholder group could then look at this framework and say, ‘Here are the three attributes that we should focus on, first and foremost, that will give us the biggest impact moving forward.’” By giving fisheries the ability to identify actions based on their specific needs, priorities and conditions, they, and the communities that rely on them, are empowered to implement policies and other measures that could help them withstand the various effects of a warming Earth.
The research(link is external) is published in the journal Fish and Fisheries
Read more at: University of California - Santa Barbara
Kiribati fishers landing a giant trevally, or te urua, off the island of Onotoa, Gilbert Islands, Kiribati (Photo Credit: Jacob Eurich)