North Sea

The North Sea is one of the most heavily impacted areas of the world’s oceans with a long history of human exploitation, particularly in fisheries. Covering an area of over half a million square kilometres, the resources of the North Sea are shared between the UK, Norway, and the surrounding EU Member States. In this Case Study (CS), the focus is on the most valuable demersal mixed fisheries for cod, haddock, whiting, saithe, hake, and anglerfish. These fish stocks are caught with a variety of gears but are specifically targeted by the ‘TR1’ category, which is distinguished by having a mesh size in the cod end greater than 120 mm. The fisheries are subject to discarding and bycatch which, despite the intentions of the EU Landing Obligation (LO) and similar discard bans in the UK and Norway, continues unabated. Consequently, the LO in the CS does not properly address Climate Change (CC) effects on ‘choke species’ (in multispecies fisheries, the species that arrest fishing activities when their quota runs out, an example in this CS being hake). Like many fish populations of the northern hemisphere, there has been a northward shift in the distribution of key fish stocks, notably cod, hake, saithe, and anglerfish. This CS will advance understanding of CC impact using the sophisticated ecosystem model, demonstrate how stocks have shifted due to CC, forecasting future distributions and making recommendations to manage shifting stocks. Additionally, the CS will advance fishing technology and gear to reduce bycatch, and consequently discarding and explore options for developing bluefin tuna hook fisheries. Given the data-rich context in this CS, MeCCAM will develop climate-informed single-species (cod), multispecies (plaice, sole), and ecosystem advice prototypes (KER2).