Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation

Climate change is causing unknown consequences to fisheries today and understanding these changes is key to better management for future generations. Norwegian Spring-Spawn Herring (NSSH) and sea surface temperature (SST) generally follow similar trends. Cooler temperatures tend to indicate low recruitment while warmer temperatures indicate moderate to high recruitment in the NSSH. The relationship between these two was analyzed in order to use temperature as a proxy variable in the analysis of stock biomass. A relationship was found between the two, and the variables were found to be cointegrated, which makes regressions between the two non-spurious regressions. Forecasts were made for the stock biomass for the next hundred years in 10 year intervals, and under differing climate change scenarios. It was found that increases in temperature are likely to cause a general increase in standing stock biomass for NSSH.