Fish and fisheries in space and time (39729/100487)

The world is in constant and rapid transformation, where climate, ecosystems, and political borders change. In the ocean, global change is often manifested through climate driven distribution and productivity shifts of individual organisms and populations. Fisheries also play an important role in driving ecological shifts by changing population structure and community dynamics. The shifts in population distributions additionally influence the spatial operations of fisheries. Despite a large number of international symposia and recent advances in marine spatial ecology, it is still largely unknown how spatial dynamics shape ecological interactions between fish stocks, and how fisheries in turn respond to these changes. In particular, understanding the interplay that happens on a spatial scale between fish that act as prey and predator, and the consequences for fisheries management is poorly understood.

The project aims to create a framework that can address these challenges by developing state of the art ecological models that account for interactions among species (multispecies models), as well as species’ spatial distributions. Currently, most fisheries are evaluated assuming no spatial structure, and each species in isolation. A major impediment to spatial approaches has been limitations in computing power and quantitative tools. Recent advances in multispecies models, as well as statistical state-space model tools optimized for spatial analysis, has made the time ripe to undertake a project that considers both multispecies and spatiotemporal aspects of fisheries ecology.

Funding
The project is funded by Carlsberg Foundation. 

Research area: Fisheries Management