Marine Species Range Shifts Necessitate Advanced Policy Planning: The Case of the North Atlantic Right Whale

Meyer‐Gutbrod, Erin; Greene, Charles H.; Davies, Kimberley T. A.

doi:10.5670/oceanog.2018.209

Cited by 47 publications

(35 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…As Calanus spp. are the main prey of right whales, this likely represents an upper trophic level response to the documented changes circa 2010 in the zooplankton community in the northwest Atlantic shelf (Devine et al, 2017;Johnson et al, 2018;Meyer-Gutbrod et al, 2018). Mean abundance per LFA was calculated from a coupled bio-physical model prediction of the spatial distribution of average May-November 2008 C. finmarchicus late stage abundance (copepodite stages CV and CVI) on the eastern Canadian shelf (Brennan et al, 2019).…”

Section: Stock Statusmentioning

confidence: 96%

Climate Change Vulnerability of American Lobster Fishing Communities in Atlantic Canada

et al. 2019

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Climate change impacts on fisheries will undoubtedly have socioeconomic impacts on coastal communities and the seafood market. However, it is a challenge to integrate climate change information in a form that can be used efficiently by adaptation planners, policy makers, and fishery managers. In this study, we frame a climate change impact assessment using a geographical perspective based on the management units of the dominant fishery, in this case, American lobster in Nova Scotia, Canada. The information considered here includes economic dependence on the fishery, population size, diversity of the fishery revenue, status of harbor infrastructure, total replacement cost of each harbor, increased relative sea level and flooding, and the vulnerability of offshore lobster to ocean warming and changes in zooplankton composition and anticipatory changes in fishery productivity across management borders. Using two ocean models to provide multi-decadal scale projections of bottom temperature, changes in offshore lobster distribution are projected to have a neutral, or positive impact on the region as a whole. However, when lobster vulnerability is combined with climate change related vulnerabilities of coastal fishing communities, it is evident that adaptation planning is needed for long-term sustainability. This impact assessment provides both a framework and information for further in-depth analyses by climate change adaptation planners and fishery managers.

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Section: Stock Statusmentioning

confidence: 96%

Climate Change Vulnerability of American Lobster Fishing Communities in Atlantic Canada

et al. 2019

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“…The Northwest Atlantic has been warming since 1980, and is projected to continue on this trend faster than other ocean basins [24][25][26] making it a natural laboratory to study the complex effects of climate change on marine predators and their prey. Recent shifts in right whale habitat in the region, for example, were linked to climate-related shifts in copepod distribution, and resulted in large additional whale mortality due to emerging new threats in their novel feeding habitat [5,[27][28][29]. Such observations partly motivate the current study, as changes in leatherback scyphozoan prey distributions could potentially enhance threats to this endangered species.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 73%

“…For example, the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale has recently experienced shifts in feeding habitat, thought to be a result of rapid warming effects on copepods in the Gulf of Maine [29,73]. Before this shift in habitat occurred, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (USA) and DFO had designated critical habitat based in their traditional feeding habitat, including the Gulf of Maine and southern Scotian Shelf [27,74]. Right whale sightings in traditional feeding habitats began declining in 2012, and in 2015 an aggregation of right whales was discovered in the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence-an area outside of earlier-defined critical habitat [27][28][29].…”

Section: Plos Onementioning

confidence: 99%

Jellyfish distribution in space and time predicts leatherback sea turtle hot spots in the Northwest Atlantic

2020

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Leatherback sea turtles (Dermochelys coriacea) migrate to temperate Canadian Atlantic waters to feed on gelatinous zooplankton ('jellyfish') every summer. However, the spatiotemporal connection between predator foraging and prey-field dynamics has not been studied at the large scales over which these migratory animals occur. We use 8903 tows of groundfish survey jellyfish bycatch data between 2006-2017 to reveal spatial jellyfish hot spots, and matched these data to satellite-telemetry leatherback data over time and space. We found highly significant overlap of jellyfish and leatherback distribution on the Scotian Shelf (r = 0.89), moderately strong correlations of jellyfish and leatherback spatial hot spots in the Gulf of St. Lawrence (r = 0.59), and strong correlations in the Bay of Fundy (r = 0.74), which supports much lower jellyfish density. Over time, jellyfish bycatch data revealed a slight northward range shift in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, consistent with gradual warming of these waters. Two-stage generalized linear modelling corroborated that sea surface temperature, year, and region were significant predictors of jellyfish biomass, suggesting a climate signal on jellyfish distribution, which may shift leatherback critical feeding habitat over time. These findings are useful in predicting dynamic habitat use for endangered leatherback turtles, and can help to anticipate large-scale changes in their distribution in response to climate-related changes in prey availability.

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“…As species distributions shift with annual cycles, traditional policy approaches are often slow to adapt, resulting in high risk and often an insufficient response [63]. Intra-annual and permanent closures are often targeted to average conditions with seasonal closures addressing the time-period of most concern [47,64].…”

Section: Multi-annual: Climatic Oscillationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…There is a need to account for the extremes to ensure that anomalous years do not result in irreparable damage to recovering or protected populations (e.g. right whales) [63,68]. Long distance connectivity through oceanographic larval transport can also be directly affected by climatic oscillations, with surface currents only connecting distant habitats during some phases of an oscillation and not others [61].…”

Section: Multi-annual: Climatic Oscillationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Beyond static spatial management: Scientific and legal considerations for dynamic management in the high seas

Crespo¹,

Mossop²,

Dunn³

et al. 2020

Preprint

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Natural and human stressors in the high seas act across a wide range of spatial and temporal scales. These include direct interaction such as fisheries bycatch or indirect interaction like warming oceans and plastic ingestion. Area-based management tools (ABMTs), such as marine protected areas and time-area closures, are a widely accepted and a broadly successful form of management used to mitigate localized human impacts on marine species and ecosystems. Protection provides an opportunity for population recovery, which can then propagate outside of the closure. As the United Nations negotiates a new treaty on the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction, efforts to design and implement high seas ABMTs at appropriate scales are critical to ensure that these spatial protection measures are most effective and climate-ready in the face of changing oceans. Here we identify the four most important temporal scales – contemporary, intra-annual, multi-annual and multidecadal – for aligning high seas ABMTs to relevant ecological, oceanographic and atmospheric processes. From this, we explore how managers and decision-makers can integrate this knowledge when implementing a new treaty.

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Marine Species Range Shifts Necessitate Advanced Policy Planning: The Case of the North Atlantic Right Whale

Cited by 47 publications

References 25 publications

Climate Change Vulnerability of American Lobster Fishing Communities in Atlantic Canada

Climate Change Vulnerability of American Lobster Fishing Communities in Atlantic Canada

Jellyfish distribution in space and time predicts leatherback sea turtle hot spots in the Northwest Atlantic

Beyond static spatial management: Scientific and legal considerations for dynamic management in the high seas

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