Publication Abstract

There is accumulating evidence for the long-term effects of climate change on marine fish and invertebrates, in particular distributional shifts associated with changes in oceanographic conditions. This prompts questions concerning the future integrity of marine fish assemblages. This study aims to evaluate future changes in an assemblage of fish and invertebrate species in the North Sea and the implications for fisheries and conservation. Three commonly applied habitat modelling approaches were used: Maxent, AquaMaps and that developed under the auspices of the Sea Around Us project. We determine current ‘predicted’ ranges using presence-only occurrence data associated with environmental variables, including sea temperature, bathymetry and salinity. Distribution predictions were subsequently extrapolated and compared between models to show the potential for range shifts under scenarios of climatic change. The ensemble of three different model projections reveal the potential conservation and fisheries impacts of species distributional changes in the North Sea, results highlighting differences in predicted responses between exploited species and those of conservation concern.