Action needed on CSIRO Climate Change - Fisheries Report

The Australian Marine Conservation Society today called on all Australian government’s to take action to protect Australia’s marine ecosystems and fisheries from climate change impacts.

This call comes in the wake of a ground-breaking CSIRO report which states that Australia’s fisheries and marine ecosystems are threatened by climate change and overfishing1.The CSIRO report titled “Impacts of Climate Change on Australian Marine Life” found that climate change will affect distribution and abundance of our ocean wildlife and fisheries productivity and that some of the biggest climate effects will be felt in the south-east of Australia and in the Tasman Sea.

Craig Bohm, National Fisheries Campaigner with the Society said “Australian governments, and all political parties, must articulate clear policies and actions to protect Australia’s fisheries from climate change impacts. We need less rhetoric on this issue and more commitment to direct action.”

Bohm continued “The Australian Government announced last week that 20% of fisheries managed by them are considered overfished and/or subject to overfishing. 80% of orange roughy stocks are overfished, eastern gemfish is overfished, deep sea sharks and oreos are overfished. Clearly we are not looking after our marine life or our fish stocks and this makes them vulnerable to climate change impacts.”

Among some of the key actions needed, CSIRO recommended establishing marine protected areas, reducing fish quotas by allocating ‘climate change’ portion of the overall catch and reducing marine pollution.

“To secure the future health of our fisheries and marine ecosystems we must reduce our impacts on the sea. Marine life needs breathing space from fishing and other impacts and no political party has yet articulated a strong commitment to achieve this goal. Its time we called them on this issue,” Bohm concluded.

Additional information

Climate Change and the Sea

A groundbreaking report released by one of Australia’s leading scientific organizations, CSIRO, has found that climate change is expected to have considerable impacts on our marine life and habitats.

The CSIRO concluded that climate change will affect the distribution and abundance of our ocean wildlife, including fish populations, and affect key industries such as tourism and fisheries. The CSIRO also found that some of the biggest climate effects will be felt in the south-east of Australia and in the Tasman Sea.

Amongst some of the key the strategies recommended by CSIRO were building resilience in our oceans, including establishing marine protected areas, reducing fishing quotas by allocating a ‘climate change’ portion of the overall catch and reducing marine pollution.

Scientific Findings

• Recent warming of tropical waters has led to repeated mass coral bleaching events on the Great Barrier Reef and elsewhere;
• Declines of giant kelp forest communities in coastal waters of eastern Tasmania have been associated with changing oceanographic conditions, including warming temperatures;
• Climate change impacts on dominant producer groups that are sensitive to climate change, such as phytoplankton and zooplankton, will have repercussions throughout the marine foodweb, including impacts on fisheries yield;
• Destruction of mangroves with sea level rise and enhanced frequency or intensity of storms;
• Increase in seagrass bed destruction if storm regimes and river flood events become more frequent or more severe;
• Increased incidence of jellyfish swarms with warming oceans;
• Unchecked outbreaks of herbivores which may decimate remaining kelp forest stands in some areas;
• Disappearance of cold water corals from deeper areas;
• Climate change impacts will potentially combine with fishery impacts to exacerbate further depletion of groundfish stocks;
• Turtles – skewing of sex ratios in turtles towards females as temperatures rise;
• Seabirds - alteration of currents will impact on distributions, migration and foraging;
• Expected increases in Australian ocean temperatures would have a 35% overall economic impact on Australian fisheries by 2070, with temperate Australian fisheries more vulnerable than tropical fisheries. For example, the report projects that the economic impacts on Tasmanian, Victorian, and Western Australian fisheries will be declines of 64%, 40%.