Expected Change in Fisheries in the Barents Sea

Project summary The project focuses on how changes in climate, i.e. increase in temperature, will influence fish stocks and their commercial stakeholders. Changes in fish distribution will not only affect the fisheries directly through changes in possibl e fishing areas, and changes in yield because of changes in stock production, but also indirectly through changes in national quotas related to how stocks are shared between international stakeholders. The sub-goals of the project are to produce best poss ible scenario of the Arctic climate (circulation, temperature, salinity, sea ice (coverage, concentration, thickness) turbulence and light), to produce best possible distribution maps of the economical important fish stocks for the different climate scena rios, to produce maps showing annual seasonal distributions of the fisheries in the Svalbard, Barents Sea and northern Norwegian Sea areas, and to investigate how the findings in above sub-goals historically have influenced the fisheries and to assess the socioeconomic implications in the future. To achieve the main objective and the sub-goals the project have been divided into four tasks; climate scenarios, the fish stocks, the fisheries, and the socio-economics.