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Underestimated barrier effects of ocean fronts shape global fishery distribution

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Abstract

Marine ecosystems exhibit high spatiotemporal heterogeneity, making it crucial to understand the mechanisms sustaining biological hotspots. Ocean fronts shape local biogeochemical processes and have long been recognized as biological hotspots aggregating organisms from phytoplankton to top predators and attracting fisheries (hotspot effects). However, fronts also exhibit pronounced environmental differences between their two sides (barrier effects), and how species and fishery distributions respond to these effects remains poorly understood. By integrating satellite-based front detection with commercial catch records, fishery-independent surveys, and global fishing datasets, we show that fishery distributions across diverse regions and major commercial stocks worldwide respond strongly to barrier effects, exhibiting 15–70% differences in distribution between the frontal warm and cold zones, driven by species-specific local thermal preferences. In contrast, responses to hotspot effects are generally sporadic with only 5–20% differences between frontal and non-frontal zones, and they emerge only when aggregations on one side of fronts offset avoidance on the other. This offset has led earlier studies to conservatively underestimate front-induced fishery variations by 55–75%. Our findings complement the traditional front-induced hotspot paradigm by clarifying the importance of barrier effects and underscore the need to reassess the role of ocean fronts in marine ecosystems.

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Data availability

Our findings are based on open-access datasets. Our global mesoscale front dataset, together with the identified frontal warm and cold zones, is available at https://zenodo.org/records/14785322. The global fishing effort dataset is available from https://globalfishingwatch.org. The satellite-observed SST dataset can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.5285/4a9654136a7148e39b7feb56f8bb02d2. Argo and BGC-Argo profiling float data are available from https://doi.org/10.17882/42182. The satellite-derived chlorophyll-a dataset can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.48670/moi-00281. All commercial fishing record data used in this study can be obtained by applying to the National Data Centre for Distant-water Fisheries of China or by requesting them from the corresponding authors, due to fishery data privacy. Source data are provided with this paper. All maps presented in this study were generated using shoreline data extracted from the Global Self-consistent, Hierarchical, High-resolution Geography Database (GSHHG), available at https://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/mgg/shorelines/shorelines.html. Source data are provided with this paper.

Code availability

All data analyses were conducted using MATLAB R2024a. All code for the global mesoscale front detection algorithm, along with our analysis methods for the two statistical indices used to quantify front-induced hotspot and barrier effects, is available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17218778.

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Acknowledgements

This work was sponsored by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (42506078, Q.X.); the Postdoctoral Fellowship Program and China Postdoctoral Science Foundation under Grant Number BX20250007 and 2024M761926 (Q.X.); the AI Special Program of Shanghai Municipal Education Commission (A1-3405-25-000303, W.Y.); the 2024 International Cooperation Seed Funding Project for China’s Ocean Decade Actions (GGZX00000, W.Y.); the Shanghai Rising-Star Cultivation Program (Sailing Program) (24YF2716700, Q.X.); the Open Funding Project of the Key Laboratory of Sustainable Exploitation of Oceanic Fisheries Resources, Ministry of Education (A1-2006-25-200202, Q.X.); the Survey, Monitoring and Assessment of Global Fishery Resources (Comprehensive scientific survey of fisheries resources at the high seas) sponsored by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs (B.L.); the follow-up program for Professor of Special Appointment (Eastern Scholar) at Shanghai Institutions of Higher Learning (GZ2022011, B.L.); and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) JP25H02072 (S.I.). We also thank Global Fishing Watch, the European Space Agency, the French Argo Data Centre, and the Copernicus Marine Service for providing publicly available datasets.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Marine Living Resource Sciences and Management, Shanghai Ocean University, Shanghai, China

    Qinwang Xing, Zihui Gao, Bilin Liu, Xinjun Chen & Wei Yu

  2. Atmosphere and Ocean Research Institute, The University of Tokyo, Kashiwa, Japan

    Qinwang Xing, Zihui Gao & Shin-ichi Ito

  3. National Distant-water Fisheries Engineering Research Center, Shanghai, China

    Qinwang Xing, Bilin Liu, Xinjun Chen & Wei Yu

  4. Key Laboratory of Sustainable Exploitation of Oceanic Fisheries Resources (Shanghai Ocean University), Ministry of Education, Shanghai, China

    Qinwang Xing, Bilin Liu, Xinjun Chen & Wei Yu

  5. Key Laboratory of Sustainable Utilization of Oceanic Fisheries, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, Shanghai, China

    Qinwang Xing, Bilin Liu, Xinjun Chen & Wei Yu

  6. Institute of Marine Science and Technology, Shandong University, Qingdao, China

    Haiqing Yu

  7. East China Sea Fisheries Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Fisheries Science, Shanghai, China

    Heng Zhang

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  1. Qinwang Xing
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Contributions

Q.X. conceived and designed the study, with contributions from X.C. and W.Y.; Q.X. compiled all datasets, performed data analysis, and created the main figures, with contributions from S.I.; Q.X. wrote the original manuscript, with contributions from Z.G., S.I., H.Y., B.L., H.Z., X.C., and W.Y.; all authors contributed to writing and revising the manuscript.

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Qinwang Xing, Xinjun Chen or Wei Yu.

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Xing, Q., Gao, Z., Ito, Si. et al. Underestimated barrier effects of ocean fronts shape global fishery distribution.
Nat Commun (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-71250-0

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