Sea Surface Temperature and Tuna Catch in the Eastern Pacific Ocean under Climate Change

Hanny John Mediodia, Viktoria Kahui and Ilan Noy

Marine Resource Economics, 2023, vol. 38, issue 4, 329 - 351

Abstract: The increase in sea surface temperature (SST), a consequence of climate change, may lead to large-scale redistributions of global fish catch, including tuna in the Eastern Pacific Ocean (EPO). This paper applies the production function approach for modeling catch and SST using high-resolution gridded data for yellowfin and skipjack tuna catch in the EPO. We find a positive but nonlinear (i.e., logarithmic and quadratic) relationship between SST and the carrying capacity of tuna fisheries. The marginal product varies across species, distance from the equator, and the fishing method. For yellowfin tuna, the largest increase in catch occurs for unassociated and dolphin sets in the Northern EPO, while for skipjack tuna the largest increases in catch occur for unassociated and floating object sets in the Southern EPO. These thermal responses to ocean warming may lead to more segregated distribution and increased specialization in effort across the Eastern Pacific.

Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/726023 (application/pdf)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/726023 (text/html)
Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.

Related works:
Working Paper: Sea Surface Temperature and Tuna Catch in the Eastern Pacific Ocean under Climate Change (2020)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ucp:mresec:doi:10.1086/726023

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Marine Resource Economics from University of Chicago Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Journals Division ().