Climate change report highlights potential impacts for wild capture sourced seafood

Research aims to arm industry with the knowledge to adapt to anticipated threats and opportunities

The future challenges for the seafood industry brought on by a changing climate are the subject of a new report published by industry bodies and academia.

The report, titled ‘Climate change risk adaptation in UK seafood: Understanding and responding to a changing climate in the wild capture seafood industry’, has been produced by Dr Angus Garrett (Seafish), Dr John Pinnegar (Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science, CEFAS), Dr Tara Marshall and Dr Julia Wouters (Aberdeen University).

It’s a refresh of previous work published 10 years ago which introduced expected climate change impacts on the supply of wild capture seafood to the UK.

Since then, although the main physical climate change impacts remain, there are new potential impacts to consider.

These include policy changes which make climate change responsibilities a more important consideration for the industry; evolving market attitudes with consequences for seafood – particularly around responsible sourcing; illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing exacerbated by changes in climate and geopolitics.

Dr Garrett from Seafish, the public body which supports the UK seafood industry to thrive, explained how the report can help the sector adapt to future climate related challenges.

He said: “With a warming world there are changes afoot in fisheries with impacts right along seafood supply chains. The extent of future warming remains an open question, but being prepared for potential changes is within our grasp.  This report hopefully contributes to that preparation.”

It’s hoped the research will provide the seafood industry with a starting point for adapting to a changing climate by both reviewing projected impacts for seafood and identifying potential future responses.

Around 30 seafood stakeholders engaged with the research process, which was conducted over 2022 and 2023, sharing a range of data and opinions.

The work, which is published as a full report, with a summary report and supporting infographics, argues that the world is “undoubtedly warming” but agreement on just how warm it’s likely to get is still open to debate.

Nevertheless, higher emissions in coming years will undoubtedly bring greater consequences for the seafood industry through changes in sea levels, in storms and waves, air and water temperature, ocean acidification and terrestrial rainfall.

The primary focus of the report is on climate related impacts for species groups relevant to the UK market – sourced from home and abroad: whitefish, pelagics and shellfish.

Adaptation actions which will support the seafood industry’s response to emerging changes are then set out.

For further information, and the access the reports, please visit Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation | Seafish