CLIMATE MIGRANTS

However late, the research report published recently in Current Biology journal by Dr. Steve Simpson from Bristol University and 7 others (Continental Shelf-Wide Response of a Fish Assemblage to Rapid Warming of the Sea) is throwing more light on how the Nature stirred up the wrangling over mackerel quota between the EU and Norway and Iceland and the Faeroes. Evidently, the warming of the NE Atlantic Ocean during several decades has been accompanied by a shift in the composition of commercial fish populations.

It appears that the majority of fishes common in the area are affected by the warming. Thus, mullet, hake, grey gurnard, red gurnard, John Dory, lemon sole, dab, and hake have become more abundant in the now warmer waters surrounding Great Britain. These warmer-water species are smaller, living shorter, growing faster, and hence less prone to overfishing. The authors, who have analyzed trawl data covering some 100 million fish, even assume that UK waters may become more productive as climate change keeps bringing new species in from the south. They've also observed that the number of species that increased with the warming was 3 times the number of declining species.

On the other hand, however, the populations of historically most popular but cold-waters preferring cod and haddock, as well as pollock and whiting, may be dwindling in UK waters, much of them has migrated northwards. Also in the NW Atlantic the mackerel normally found in waters from Cape Hatteras to Newfoundland, shifted about 250 km northwards and 50 km eastwards and into shallower 5 deg.C waters, their preferred temperature range, perhaps also due to shifts in plankton concentrations.

In view of these ocean dynamics, the quarrel about national shares of the mackerel TAC seems to me a bit anachronistic. No doubt, the shares had been set before mackerel spread in Iceland's and Faeroese waters. Such changes don't go away, just because Europe's fishery managers prefer to stick to their inertia. It seems logical that the management rather follows the migrational pattern of the various fish species and their stocks, and readjusts national shares accordingly. It is politically and logically unreasonable to request the Faroese and the Icelanders to observe their former small shares in the mackerel TAC, when the formerly rare mackerel has become so abundant on their own national fishing grounds.

Shouldn't the European fishery management establishment start adapting its measures to the ongoing changes in the composition of fishing stocks in the EU-managed areas?