ABSTRACT
The deep sea plays a critical role in global climate regulation through uptake and storage of heat and carbon dioxide. However, this regulating service causes warming, acidification and deoxygenation of deep waters, leading to decreased food availability at the seafloor. These changes and their projections are likely to affect productivity, biodiversity and distributions of deep-sea fauna, thereby compromising key ecosystem services. Understanding how climate change can lead to shifts in deep-sea species distributions is critically important in developing management measures. We used environmental niche modelling along with the best available species occurrence data and environmental parameters to model habitat suitability for key cold-water coral and commercially important deep-sea fish species under present-day (1951-2000) environmental conditions and to project changes under severe, high emissions future (2081-2100) climate projections (RCP8.5 scenario) for the North Atlantic Ocean. Our models projected a decrease of 28%-100% in suitable habitat for cold-water corals and a shift in suitable habitat for deep-sea fishes of 2.0°-9.9° towards higher latitudes. The largest reductions in suitable habitat were projected for the scleractinian coral Lophelia pertusa and the octocoral Paragorgia arborea, with declines of at least 79% and 99% respectively. We projected the expansion of suitable habitat by 2100 only for the fishes Helicolenus dactylopterus and Sebastes mentella (20%-30%), mostly through northern latitudinal range expansion. Our results projected limited climate refugia locations in the North Atlantic by 2100 for scleractinian corals (30%-42% of present-day suitable habitat), even smaller refugia locations for the octocorals Acanella arbuscula and Acanthogorgia armata (6%-14%), and almost no refugia for P. arborea. Our results emphasize the need to understand how anticipated climate change will affect the distribution of deep-sea species including commercially important fishes and foundation species, and highlight the importance of identifying and preserving climate refugia for a range of area-based planning and management tools.
ABSTRACT
Mapping and quantifying bottom trawling fishing pressure on the seafloor is pivotal to understand its effects on deep-sea benthic habitats. Using data from the Vessel Monitoring System of crustacean trawlers along the Portuguese margin, we have identified the most exploited areas and characterized the most targeted habitats and water depths. We estimated a total trawling effort of 69596, 66766, and 63427 h y-1 for the years 2012, 2013, and 2014 respectively which, considering the total landings estimated for this gear, yield values of 20.76, 21.06, and 19.11 kg of landed fish per trawled hour. The main trawling pressure is exerted in the South and Southwest Portuguese margins, on muddy and muddy-sand bottoms between 200 and 700 m water depths, while in the North and Central-West coasts a minor effort, at shallower waters and across a wider range of habitats, is also applied. The most landed species are crustaceans such as rose shrimp and Norway lobster, although this varies importantly between the different regions of Portugal, being fish and cephalopods the main captures in the Northern ports. We discuss the consequences of trawling for the impacted communities as well as the characteristics of the commercialization of these captures in Portugal.
