Global climate change: Policy implications for fisheries

Abstract Several government agencies are evaluating policy options for addressing global climate change. These include planning for anticipated effects and developing mitigation options where feasible if climate does change as predicted. For fisheries resources, policy questions address effects on international, national, and regional scales. Climate change variables expected to affect inland and offshore fisheries include temperature rise, changes in the hydrologic cycle, alterations in nutrient fluxes, and reduction and relocation of spawning and nursery habitat. These variables will affect resources at all levels of biological organization, including the genetic, organism, population, and ecosystem levels. In this context, changes in primary productivity, species composition in the food-web, migration, invasions, synchrony in biological cycles, shifts in utilization of niches, and problems of larvae entrainment in estuaries have been identified. Maintaining ecosystem robustness (i.e., high biodiversity...