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Climate change and fishing are two of the greatest anthropogenic stressors on marine ecosystems. We investigate the effects of these stressors on Hawaii's deep-set longline fishery for bigeye tuna (Thunnus obesus) and the ecosystem which supports it using a size-based food web model that incorporates individual species and captures the metabolic effects of rising ocean temperatures. We find that when fishing and climate change are examined individually, fishing is the greater stressor. This suggests that proactive fisheries management could be a particularly effective tool for mitigating anthropogenic stressors either by balancing or outweighing climate effects. However, modeling these stressors jointly shows that even large management changes cannot completely offset climate effects. Our results suggest that a decline in Hawaii's longline fishery yield may be inevitable. The effect of climate change on the ecosystem depends primarily upon the intensity of fishing mortality. Management measures which take this into account can both minimize fishery decline and support at least some level of ecosystem resilience.

Item Type:	Refereed Article
Keywords:	climate modelling, fish projections, multiple stressors, climate change, fishing, pelagic, bigeye tuna, size-based model, food web model
Research Division:	Environmental Sciences
Research Group:	Climate change impacts and adaptation
Research Field:	Ecological impacts of climate change and ecological adaptation
Objective Division:	Environmental Management
Objective Group:	Coastal and estuarine systems and management
Objective Field:	Assessment and management of coastal and estuarine ecosystems
UTAS Author:	Blanchard, JL (Professor Julia Blanchard)
ID Code:	144010
Year Published:	2019
Web of Science® Times Cited:	20
Deposited By:	Ecology and Biodiversity
Deposited On:	2021-04-14
Last Modified:	2021-06-21
Downloads:	15 View Download Statistics