Existing marine parks may not protect marine species persistence in a rapidly warming climate
Human induced climate warming due to the burning of fossil fuels is rapidly affecting ocean conditions and habitats.
Changing ocean temperatures affects where fish and other species can live, and therefore also how they are able to forage and reproduce. At the same time, fishing and other industries put pressure on marine species to meet human resource needs.
Just like on land, marine parks (protected areas) are often raised as a solution to protect marine species abundance and provide spillover benefits. However, planning work to develop where marine protected areas are located to protect priority species rarely incorporates information on where species ranges will shift due to climate warming.
Read this open access paper on the FACETS website.
In this paper, we used data from climate models to predict where 98 commonly occurring marine species in British Columbia (BC), Canada will be most likely to live in the future under a range of climate change outcomes through to the end of this century.
By overlaying those maps of species presence with existing BC marine parks, we can learn which species may still be protected by existing marine protection by 2100.
Second, we used a protected areas planning tool to recommend priority regions for protection within BC for those same marine species.
We found that many existing BC marine parks will no longer protect marine species by the end of this century without changing the location of those marine parks under current emissions trends, and that it will be impossible to protect more than a third of the marine species we looked at within coastal BC without dramatically reducing fossil fuel emissions, necessitating rapid climate action as well as transboundary collaboration with Alaska.
Read the paper — Considering the implications of climate-induced species range shifts in marine protected areas planning by Charlotte K. Whitney, William W.L. Cheung, and Natalie C. Ban.
