Photo credit: Cornelius Poppe (NTB SCANPIX)
Review: Abdel Rahman El Gamal (Founder of the website)
The stock of cod in the Barents Sea is considered the largest in the world with its quotas of about more than 900.000 tons in 2013. Believing that the Barents Sea can become nine degrees warmer in this century, studies and models have been developed to examine and predict the effect of warmer temperature on cod stocks. In general, the global warming, with the accompanied reduction in sea ice will likely result in Polar cod losing the ice-associated part of its phase of life. The findings of a study revealed a positive relationship between recruitment of cod (Gadus morhua) in the Barents Sea and temperature; the spawning will occur earlier at higher temperatures. The same is generally true for the time of peak zooplankton production, the prime cod larval food.
Models have been constructed to predict the effect of warmer temperature on the overall performance of cod stocks whereas the main parameters have been considered upon constructing such models to predict food availability, genetic reaction (e.g. selection), migration of fish stocks, spawning time, etc. However, there are strong opinions that projecting stock response to climate change is a challenging task and could lead to different outcomes based on the hypothesis used in the models. There is a strong feeling about the difficulty of predicting the future development of cod stocks with a reasonable or quantifiable degree of certainty.
Because fish stocks in the Barents Sea are shared between Norway and Russia, bilateral cooperation arrangements exist for the management of the Barents Sea fishery.
References: Papers in “Climate change and effects on the Barents Sea marine living resources. 15th Russian-Norwegian Symposium Longyearbyen, 7-8 September 2011).
The website of “Swedish Agencies for Marine and Water Management”; www.havochvatten.se
