Seminar on Climate and Fisheries

The Newport fishing fleet.\Photo by Sara Schreiber.

The Hatfield Marine Science Center’s Thursday Research Seminar Series continues online. Next up, on Thursday, March 3, at 3:30 p.m., is a talk on “Climate change effects on important fisheries species: from individual physiology to population level changes in productivity.”

The speaker is Emily Slesinger, National Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow, Alaska Fisheries Science Center of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Dr. Slesinger’s summary of her topic:

“Climate change stressors such as ocean warming and ocean acidification can affect marine organisms through impacts on individual physiology to large-scale shifts in ecosystem dynamics. Physiologically-based studies focus on the mechanism of how these stressors impact organisms and can provide parameters used in forecasting change in metabolically available habitat. This talk will focus on two ocean systems, the US Northeast Shelf and the Bering Sea/Gulf of Alaska, and explore how current environmental stressors are affecting important fisheries species in those systems. The US Northeast Shelf is one of the most rapidly warming regions in the world, and many fish species there are exhibiting poleward distribution shifts, including the Northern stock of black sea bass. I investigated the effects of temperature on black sea bass through a laboratory-based physiological experiment to determine optimal temperatures and explored the implications of a poleward range expansion through field collections, with accompanying laboratory dissections, ovarian histology and lipid extractions of somatic and reproductive tissues. High latitude oceans, including the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska, are simultaneously experiencing both ocean warming and ocean acidification, which may exacerbate the negative effects from these stressors. Future experiments will assess the interaction of ocean warming and ocean acidification on larval Pacific cod, Artic cod, and yellowfin sole fish physiology and growth. Altogether, these studies can provide important information that can add to our understanding of climate change impacts on important fisheries species allowing us to adapt our management plans alongside environmental change, and ultimately promoting sustainable fishing into the future.”

When it comes times to attend the seminar, connect here.