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No significant projected climate change effects on the geographic ranges of marine aquaculture species under the sustainable scenario (SSP 1-1.9, 1.5°C warming)

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Abstract

Aquaculture is increasingly relied upon for global seafood production, projected to be the leading supplier by 2030. Climate change impacts on species health and industry productivity are already evident, creating uncertainties around long-term aquaculture development. While these impacts have been projected for some species, around 62% of aquaculture production remains unassessed. We utilized climate dissimilarity to assess the exposure of 327 species—including those previously unassessed—in their native ranges to changing climates under three climate scenarios: SSP1-1.9, SSP3-7.0, and SSP5-8.5. We projected that under a sustainability scenario (SSP1-1.9), 41% of Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ) remained unexposed, including high-value aquaculture regions. However, under increased emissions scenarios (SSP3-7.0 and SSP5-8.5) all current aquaculture EEZ are projected to be exposed. Semi-enclosed seas, like the Baltic, Black, and Red Seas, experience the largest dissimilarity, alongside equatorial regions. Our findings suggest widespread mitigation efforts are necessary to ensure the long-term resilience of marine aquaculture.

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Data availability

Climate data were retrieved from the Copernicus Marine Service at [http://resources.marine.copernicus.eu/products] and the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (Phase 6) at [https://esgf-node.llnl.gov/projects/cmip6/] in May 2023. Species’ range maps were retrieved from AquaMaps at [https://www.aquamaps.org] in May 2023.

Code availability

Our manually-derived range maps are available on figshare89 and our code on GitHub (https://github.com/jorgeassis/climateAnalogs).

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Acknowledgements

This study was supported by the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) of Portugal through projects UIDB/04326/2020 (https://doi.org/10.54499/UIDB/04326/2020), UIDP/04326/2020 (https://doi.org/10.54499/UIDP/04326/2020), LA/P/0101/2020 (https://doi.org/10.54499/LA/P/0101/2020), and the Individual Call to Scientific Employment Stimulus 2022.00861.CEECIND/CP1729/CT0003 (https://doi.org/10.54499/2022.00861.CEECIND/CP1729/CT0003). The authors thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on the manuscript.

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  1. Faculty of Biosciences and Aquaculture, Nord University, Bodø, Norway

    Amy Leigh Mackintosh, Griffin Goldstein Hill, Mark John Costello & Jorge Assis

  2. Centre of Marine Sciences, CCMAR, University of Algarve, Faro, Portugal

    Jorge Assis

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  1. Amy Leigh Mackintosh
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Contributions

A.L.M., G.G.H.: Conceptualization, Methodology, Interpretive Analysis, Investigation, Data Curation, Writing—Original Draft, Writing—Review & Editing, and Visualization. M.J.C.: Conceptualization, Investigation, Writing—Review & Editing, and Funding Acquisition. J.A.: Conceptualization, Formal Analysis, Writing—Review & Editing, and Funding Acquisition. A.L.M. and G.G.H. contributed equally to this manuscript.

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Amy Leigh Mackintosh.

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Mackintosh, A.L., Hill, G.G., Costello, M.J. et al. No significant projected climate change effects on the geographic ranges of marine aquaculture species under the sustainable scenario (SSP 1-1.9, 1.5°C warming).
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