GCRF Blue Communities Research Programme -

18 December 2020

By Dr Susan Kay and Dr Sevrine Sailley, Plymouth Marine Laboratory

Project 10 has produced model outputs showing how the marine environment and fishing potential could change in the coming decades as climate change takes effect.

Since the annual meeting in July 2020 the focus in Project 10 has been toward the use of the model outputs in various research questions defined by the partners. Most of these will lead to published scientific papers led by partners, in addition to 2 core papers on the model outputs led by Project 10, with contribution from partners. To this end, a one week online writing workshop was held in August to share ideas, progress and difficulties, and a follow-up virtual meeting was held at the end of October with a similar goal.

The papers led by partners focus on issues that are key for their study area. The work being done using the Project 10 model projections includes among others: implication of rising sea surface temperature and El Nino for coral reefs in Cu Lao Cham; impact of climate change on Malaysian fisheries; aquaculture capacity in Palawan and changes in biomass of round scad, a set of species already suffering from decreasing catch.

Many of the papers have links across other Blue Communities project and are focused on topics of importance to government and community stakeholders. The core papers look at the whole of the Southeast Asian seas and the changes experienced there in term of temperature, primary production and the changes in key fish species. There are few published studies which use regional modelling to look at how climate change will affect the seas of Southeast Asia so the Blue Communities work will be a useful contribution.

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Modelling change

18 December 2020

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