Business operations impact fishermen’s resilience to climate change, new study finds

Timothy Flory has spent much of the past 20 years working in and around commercial fishing. Born and raised in Casco Bay, Maine, he grew up stuffing lobster and throwing bait on Portland’s working waterfront. He has worked in commercial fishing in California, Alaska, and the Mexican state of Baja California Sur.

Frawley, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Maine’s Darling Marine Center, has spent years working on the water, closely observing how fishermen go about their business and learning what they catch and how they catch it. and how it affected fisheries and fisheries. profit.

“While the deserts of northwestern Mexico and the rocky coast of Maine may seem worlds apart, we found striking similarities between the Baja coast and the Maine coast,” Flory said. He looked back. “Both locations include fairly remote communities with local cultures and traditions defined by strong and enduring connections between people and the sea.”

Drawing on his extensive knowledge of commercial fishing and the observational and research skills he has honed over the years, Mr. Flory will lead an international research team to determine how fishermen’s operational decisions have global impacts that threaten their livelihoods. We found out how it affects our ability to adapt to certain climate changes.

In their new study published in the journal Changes in the global environmentresearchers found that fishermen Responses to a changing climate can be heavily influenced by fishing methods and organization. This study highlights the role of different strategies associated with different group sizes and levels of cooperation in how fishers respond and adapt to climate change.

“Climate change and changes in marine ecosystems pose challenges to the sustainability of fisheries, both economically and environmentally,” said Flory, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Maine’s Darling Marine Center. “We know a great deal about how individual fishermen and coastal fishermen respond to ocean change, but the social structures they choose to organize themselves may be susceptible to the associated shocks and stressors. Less is known about how it affects vulnerability to and adaptive capacity.

It is important to understand the factors that enhance fishermen’s ability to adapt to environmental fluctuations and changes. Coastal communities around the world, including many of Maine’s fishing-dependent communities, are facing rising sea levels, reduced access to available water, shifting ranges of economically important species, rapidly changing technology and We are facing the effects of the climate crisis, including our economic situation.

Flory conducted this research while working as a postdoctoral researcher affiliated with the University of California, Santa Cruz, NOAA’s Southwest Fisheries Science Center, and the University of Maine. With collaborators at the University of Maine, Stanford University, Stockholm University, University of Rhode Island, Duke University, Oregon State University, Autonomous University of Baja California, Natural Niparaja Historical Society, and Scripps Marine Biological Community Institute (COBI), Flory synthesized . Information about how and what people fished in northwestern Mexico, and how those behaviors changed in the face of changing ocean conditions.

Some of these fishermen belong to cooperatives, while others work as independent owner-managers or as part of businesses supported by private capital from patrons. . Periodic “fish tickets,” in which fishermen are required to report their catch to the Mexican government, reveal how fishing strategies differed between operations before and after a series of marine heatwaves, and what that meant for profitability. provided the team with an opportunity to investigate the implications. each.

These results indicate that although fishermen working as members of cooperatives are more resilient to short-term environmental shocks, they target a narrower range of fish species and may become more vulnerable as climate change progresses. ing. In many ways, small-scale cooperative fishers on the Pacific Coast of Baja California are increasingly similar to those in Maine and California. With other fisheries in decline, shellfish catches such as lobster and Dungeness crab are becoming increasingly mainstream.

This study is part of MAREA+, a long-term interdisciplinary project focused on the environmental and human aspects of small-scale fisheries in the Gulf of California region. The study was funded by the National Science Foundation and is based on more than 10 years of fishing data collected by fishermen and managed by the Mexican government.

Heather Leslie, a professor of marine science at the University of Maine based at the Darling Marine Center, mentored Flory as part of this project.

“It’s really interesting to see how detailed information about fisheries organizations illuminates our understanding of responding to climate impacts,” she said. “It would be great to have this type of analysis in New England, especially given the growing interest in innovative approaches to fisheries, aquaculture, and other aspects of the blue economy.”

Contact: Marcus Wolff, 207.581.3721; marcus.wolf@main.edu