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Researchers Connect Climate Change to Fish Populations

A UC San Diego Scripps Institution of Oceanography study might help the commercial fishing industry. The research is the first to connect climate changes to fish populations. KPBS reporter Ed Joyce ha

A UC San Diego Scripps Institution of Oceanography study might help the commercial fishing industry. The research is the first to connect climate changes to fish populations. KPBS reporter Ed Joyce has details.

Scripps researchers Ryan Rykaczewski and David Checkley studied the reasons why California's thriving sardine population crashed in the 1940s. They found that climate factors, specifically wind conditions, were to blame rather than over-fishing.

Rykaczewski says the research could provide a new approach of predicting fish populations using climate change and wind factors. He says that would help the industry know when fishing might lead to severe declines.

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Right now fisheries are usually managed on a single stock basis, without any input from the environment. But if we understand how the environment impacts these different species, then we can manage based on human activities as well as environmental fluctuations.

He says in the past over-fishing got the blame for fishery declines. But the study shows that climate changes are also responsible for changes in fish populations.

Ed Joyce, KPBS News.