May 22, 2017 — The continued warming of the Gulf of Maine is expected to pose additional threats to the region’s commercially important species of seafood — and by extension to the fishing communities that harvest them, according to a new study.
The study, jointly compiled by researchers at NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center and the Nature Conservancy, draws the link between the region’s unprecedented warming and concerns about the ability of species to find new, sustainable habitats.
“These changes will directly affect fishing communities, as species now landed in those ports move out of range, and new species move in,” said the authors of the study that appears in journal Progress in Oceanography.
The migration of a spectrum of species could create “economic, social and natural resource management challenges” throughout the region, according to the study.
“The projections indicate that as species shift from one management jurisdiction to another, or span state and federal jurisdictions, increased collaboration among management groups will be needed to set quotas and establish allocations,” the researchers concluded.
At the heart of the concern is the startling rate at which the Gulf of Maine is warming.
Previous research has shown the region’s surface waters are warming faster than 99 percent of the Earth’s oceans and the study’s researchers project the region will continue to warm “two to three times faster than the global average through the end of this century.”