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Long-term population dynamics of three-spined stickleback Gasterosteus aculeatus in the White Sea during the 20th century has patterns similar to that of eelgrass Zostera marina. In this study we address possible mechanisms of such association through analysis of spatial distribution of juvenile stickleback in the wild and their substrate preferences in experimental conditions. Samples from different habitats (Z. marina, Fucus spp.) in 13 localities of Kandalaksha Bay have shown that the juvenile sticklebacks occurred mainly in the eelgrass beds. Their density was significantly lower in fucoids. In the experiments, carried out in August 2008–2009, the juveniles were offered the following types of substrates: brown macroalgae (dense and scarce), eelgrass and control (no substrate). In the experiments sticklebacks also showed a tendency to prefer eelgrass to fucoids, even if the density of the latter was higher. This may explain their higher densities associated with eelgrass in the wild.

A major challenge of contemporary marine science is disentangling consequences of climate change from other impacts, and studying non-target species and using historical resources to see long-term trends can meet this need. However, such data can be fragmented, and here, we demonstrate the potential of leveraging across sources for insight. We assembled a variety of historical sources such as scientific and personal observations, anecdotal information, and archival fisheries data to create an abundance time series on threespine stickleback Gasterosteus aculeatus in the White Sea starting in the late 19th century—the longest time series for this species. Stickleback peaked during the warm period of the 1920–1940s and declined during the colder period of the 1950–1990s and now is the most numerous vertebrate in the sea. Analyses of historical and recent time series based on our own data (2007–2019) showed that stickleback abundance decreases during colder winters. It is not associated with zooplankton biomass, positively correlated with herring Clupea sp. catches and negatively with navaga Eleginus navaga catches. Large population size and food web interactions suggest that change in stickleback abundance has the potential to affect the entire White Sea ecosystem.

Crisis forecasting is an extremely important area of risk reduction in business. These forecasts help in developing measures to mitigate the negative socio-economic consequences of the crisis. The article analyzes the methods of anti-crisis management in the hotel business.

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