Research recommendations on fisheries and aquaculture in the Arctic
This is Section 13.7 of the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment
Lead Authors: Hjálmar Vilhjálmsson, Alf Håkon Hoel; Contributing Authors: Sveinn Agnarsson, Ragnar Arnason, James E. Carscadden, Arne Eide, David Fluharty, Geir Hønneland, Carsten Hvingel, Jakob Jakobsson, George Lilly, Odd Nakken,Vladimir Radchenko, Susanne Ramstad,William Schrank, Niels Vestergaard,Thomas Wilderbuer
Past experience shows that marine living resources are not unlimited and must be harvested with caution. Although management practices have improved in recent decades, the present situation still leaves much room for improvement. More and better research is required to fill this gap.
- Present monitoring of the physical and biological marine environment must be continued and in many cases increased. Basic research is often considered a burden, but is a prerequisite for understanding biological processes. Modern technology enables the automation of many of the time consuming tasks previously conducted from expensive research vessels. For example, buoys can now be deployed in strategic locations on land and at sea for continuous measurement of many variables required in marine biological studies.The monitoring of commercial stocks must also continue, applying new technologies as these become available. There is a general shortage of ship time for sea-based work. Administrators (governments) are often unaware of this, also that despite computers enabling more extensive and deeper analyses of existing datasets, people are still required to operate and program the computers.
- Although the modeling of marine processes, particularly the modeling of climate variability, is still in its infancy, such work is the key to increasing understanding of the effects of the projected climate change scenarios (see Chapter 4).The development of regional applications is particularly important. Regional effects might differ substantially from those considered average global effects. In order to relate physical changes in the atmosphere and oceans to changes within specific ecosystems, the modeling of regional effects is essential. Current fisheries management models are based on general assumptions of constant environmental factors. The use of ecosystem-based approaches for fisheries management will require that physical and biological factors that do not directly affect the target species are also taken into account.
- It is extremely difficult to estimate the economic consequences of climate change on the world fisheries or the fisheries for any given region. It is important to invest in the development of better methods for examining the economic and social consequences of climate change, at both the global and regional level, and at the national and local level.
Chapter 13: Fisheries and Aquaculture
13.1 Introduction (Research recommendations on fisheries and aquaculture in the Arctic)
13.2 Northeast Atlantic – Barents and Norwegian Seas
13.3 Central North Atlantic – Iceland and Greenland
13.4 Newfoundland and Labrador Seas, Northeastern Canada
13.5 North Pacific – Bering Sea
13.6. Synthesis and key findings
13.7. Research recommendations
