Climate Winners: Adapting to Shifting Species Distributions. Gregg, David¹, Hiro Uchida¹, Dawn Kotowicz¹, Kate Masury², Nicky Roberts², ¹University of Rhode Island, ²Eating with the Ecosystem

Climate change is driving shifts in fish stock distributions that will affect resource availability for fishery supply chains worldwide. In the last decade, the waters off of New England have already warmed faster than much of the world’s oceans and as a result, the impacts of climate change and variability are particularly acute in this region. In addition to the effects on fish stocks and fisheries, there will also be major effects downstream. Seafood businesses must be prepared to adapt to these changes in order to survive in today’s conditions; however, it is uncertain how species shifts and the resulting management changes will alter the seafood marketplace. In this project, we are studying how and to what extent New England seafood supply chains are capable of adapting to seafood species that are “climate winners” i.e. species that are predicted to become more abundant in New England waters due to climate change. Using indicators derived from climate resilience and adaptive fisheries frameworks, we constructed a semi-structured interview protocol featuring 30 seafood businesses across New England. The goal was to understand and qualify business adaptability to species shifts. The results of this research will provide different types of seafood businesses (referred to as business typologies) with actionable recommendations to become more adaptable to species shifts long-term.