KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 May 4, 2020 \u2013 A team of fisheries scientists and marine policy experts, led by a 溏心vlog免费B站 researcher, examined how climate change is affecting the ocean environment and found that the changing conditions will likely result in increased fisheries-related conflicts and create new challenges in the management of global fisheries.<\/p>\n
The team\u2019s research was published last month in the journal Marine Policy<\/em>.<\/p>\n Elizabeth Mendenhall, 溏心vlog免费B站 assistant professor of marine affairs, said that ocean warming, acidification and sea level rise that are a direct result of climate change are causing populations of fish to shift, making fish increasingly scarce, shifting the boundaries of where nations can legally fish, and increasing the intensity of fishing pressure around the world. The result will be growing conflicts between individual fishermen, fishing communities, fishing nations and fishery managers.<\/p>\n \u201cThese conflicts exist at multiple scales,\u201d said Mendenhall, who is writing a book about geopolitics and ocean governance. \u201cSome of it is one boat versus another, sometimes it\u2019s one country versus another, and it can get very complicated. It isn\u2019t just about overfishing any more. There are other drivers and other dynamics involved.\u201d<\/p>\n As warming temperatures shift fish populations to different areas, for instance, the bulk of those stocks may cross the borders of a nations\u2019 200-mile exclusive economic zone, making it illegal for those who have fished those stocks for many years to pursue them any longer.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re seeing examples of fishermen crossing borders more often now because the stocks they feel they have a right to have shifted across the border,\u201d Mendenhall said.<\/p>\n Among the more challenging questions that climate change is raising for fishing nations is what happens when sea level rise submerges an island. Does that change the nation\u2019s maritime boundaries?<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s an ongoing debate about whether you keep your maritime claim even though you have no land base to manage it from,\u201d said Mendenhall. \u201cOr does your claim go away? There are a lot of nations that fish over long distances that are ready to exploit those areas if national boundaries no longer exist.\u201d<\/p>\n The tiny Japanese atoll of Okinotorishima is one such case. Located in the southernmost archipelago of Japan, its submergence is raising questions about whether Taiwan and China may legally fish in the area claimed by Japan.<\/p>\n \u201cI argue that as sea level rises, Japan\u2019s argument gets weaker,\u201d said Mendenhall, noting that the countries have not challenged the boundaries based on the island\u2019s submergence yet. \u201cThe rules on where you can make your maritime claim are based on where the land is.<\/p>\n \u201cThe same problem applies to coastlines,\u201d she added. \u201cLow-lying countries like Bangladesh and Vietnam could lose a lot of maritime territory as sea level rises. The outer edge of their claim could move closer to their coastline.\u201d<\/p>\n The research team makes a series of recommendations based on its findings designed to improve global fishery management. They recommend greater multilateral fishery monitoring, similar to what is in place off East Africa to combat piracy, which can help deter or catch illegal fishers, thereby reducing the chance that individual fishing boats will take matters into their own hands.<\/p>\n \u201cWe also suggest that marine protected areas be used, but it\u2019s critical that the area protected is one where habitats are still thriving despite climate change,\u201d Mendenhall said. \u201cThere is concern, however, that when you protect one area, it may displace the fishers to somewhere else and make the problem worse elsewhere. We need to think about the dynamics that protected areas may cause and account for that in the site selection process.\u201d<\/p>\n Finally, the researchers recommend strengthening the global fisheries management regime by taking into account climate change and the new sources of fishery conflict. The management boundaries of many fish stocks were drawn decades ago, and some parts of the open ocean are not managed at all because no productive fish stocks were there many years ago, yet there may be fish stocks there in the future. Most importantly, they suggest that the regional fishery management organizations work together to develop coordinated governance systems to better manage fisheries as environmental conditions change and greater conflicts arise.<\/p>\n \u201cThese changes to how [regional fishery management organizations] manage fisheries, and how they coordinate and cooperate with one another, can make high seas fisheries management more resilient to shifts in stocks and users, and changes in relative abundance,\u201d the researchers conclude.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 May 4, 2020 \u2013 A team of fisheries scientists and marine policy experts, led by a 溏心vlog免费B站 researcher, examined how climate change is affecting the ocean environment and found that the changing conditions will likely result in increased fisheries-related conflicts and create new challenges in the management of global […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[5],"class_list":["post-75462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archives","tag-college-of-the-environment-and-life-sciences"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75462"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75462\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}