Institute of Aquaculture
Forecast 2050 Impact of climate change on European seafood production By Trevor Telfer, Lynne Falconer and Bruce McAdam CLIMATE change is linked to public health, food and water security, migration, peace, and security, said the then United Nations secretary-general Ban Ki-moon in 2016. ‘It is a moral issue. It is an issue of social justice, human rights and fundamental ethics. We have a profound responsibility to the fragile web of life on this earth, and to this generation and those that will follow.’ Aquaculture is the fastest developing food production sector on the planet but how it is affected by climate change is poorly understood. The vulnerability of aquaculture production and associated livelihoods varies significantly throughout the world. It is likely to be greatest in Asia for freshwater and brackish water production, but in some parts of Europe and South America for marine production (Handisyde et al, 2017, doi: 10.1111/faf.12186). ClimeFish is a European Horizon 2020 funded project, running from 2016 to 2020, which is investigating the impact of climate change on seafood production throughout the European Economic Area from now until 2050. Coordinated by the University of Tromsø, the project’s 21 partners, in association with stakeholders, plan to co-create models to forecast the effects of climate change sustainability on wild capture and cultured European seafood to 2050. Consequently, a constructed decision support system will enable the implementation of management plans in line with the ecosystem approach to allow European regulators, fishers and aquaculture operators to anticipate, prepare and adapt to climate change, while minimising economic losses and social consequences. The Environmental Management Research Team of the Institute of Aquaculture, as one of the project partners, is developing forecasting models of the effects of climate change on Atlantic salmon and shellfish grown in Scotland and Norway. Using model outputs of climate change projections, produced by the Institute of Marine Research in Norway (see Figure), growth forecasting models for Atlantic salmon have been formulated. These combine the outputs from the Ewos EGI model (Cargill Inc) with a newly developed dynamic energy budget (DEB) approach. Nofima and the Institute of Aquaculture are now using these models as part of a north-east Atlantic case study for Atlantic salmon, using farm level data throughout Scotland and Norway. The preliminary models were presented to stakeholders are a meeting in Oslo in April and we are now working with both Scottish and Norwegian salmon industries to further refine them. Early results show that there are both advantages and disadvantages to the changing sea surface properties 68
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Above: The ClimeFish partners at the first annual meeting in Crete, 2017.
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Early results show there are both advantages and disadvantages for the salmon industry
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for the salmon industry, especially in the wide temperature ranges between southern and northern Norway. As another part of this initiative, ClimeFish and CERES, a parallel H2020 project on the effects of climate change on aquatic production, are contributing to Seafish’s Climate Change Adaption Plan for Aquaculture in the UK. Climate change risk matrices, which are the foundation to the report, have been compiled jointly between Seafish, CEFAS, the Institute of Aquaculture and the Scottish Salmon Producers Organisation and are now under further consultation with stakeholders before finalising. See http://climefish.eu and https://twitter.com/ ClimeFish for more information. This project has received funding from the European Union Horizon 2020 Programme under grant agreement no. 677039.For more information, contact Trevor Telfer (t.c.telfer@stir.ac.uk), Lynne Falconer (lynne. falconer1@stir.ac.uk) or Bruce McAdam (b.j.mcadam@ stir.ac.uk)
Institute of Aquaculture
08/05/2018 11:35:28