CIM researcher Xochitl Elías is participating in the research as part of her thesis
The work is being carried out on the island of Shikoku, considered a natural laboratory of climate change
The predoutoral researcher of the UVigo Marine Research Centre (CIM) Xochitl É. Elías Ilosvay participates together with a group of experts on the Japanese island of Shikoku in a fieldwork, which aims to learn how fishing communities are adapting to climate change. “On the west coast of Shikoku Island, fishing communities have been seeing the effects of coastal climate change for years. Professors Naoki Kumagai, from the National Institute for Environmental Studies, and Jorge García Molinos, from Hokkaido University, are studying and documenting the tropicalisation of the waters, where corals are displacing macroalgae communities in warmer waters, with important consequences for fishing,” explains the researcher from the Future Oceans Lab of the CIM, who points out that these ecological changes function as a natural laboratory, an example of the impacts of climate change, which are expected to occur in other areas where warming is less accelerated.
Although Japanese culture is very different from the Galician one, the fishing systems in both regions are very similar, with groups of fishermen’s cooperatives, similar to the Galician cofradías, which provide them with access and exploitation rights and similar fishing resources with seaweed and bivalve mariculture and artisanal fishing practices. “However, cultural differences and language barriers, together with the distance, make this fieldwork a great challenge,” says the CIM researcher, who highlights and thanks the work of Kameyuki Seike, a diving professional on the coast of Shikoku, with extensive knowledge of the region’s fishing sector. “Thanks to his experience and leadership in coordinating this fieldwork, the team was able to present the research to the local cooperative authorities and gain access to interview the fishermen,” says Xochitl Elías.
The team of experts will spend five weeks touring the west coast of Shikoku collecting information on impacts on fisheries and responses from the industry. After meetings with local authorities and representatives of five fishing cooperatives in the northern and central areas, where they tested the surveys and interviews, the interview phase begins these days in the Uwajima area of Ehime Prefecture. “The team will move south, where they will be joined by Kuroshio Research Institute doctor Yuji Ise, to interview the communities most affected by tropicalisation. It is hoped that this study will contribute to understanding the type of adaptive responses in fisheries in order to improve the management of marine resources under climate change impacts in the region and in other parts of the world where changes are occurring less rapidly,” explains Xochitl Elías.
Research focused on the adaptive responses of fishing communities
As part of the ERC-StG: Clock: Climate Adaptation to Shifting Stocks project, led by Elena Ojea, Elías’ thesis covers the adaptive responses of fishing communities to climate change, in places where changes in diversity occur in a drastic way. The CIM researcher analysed the places where fisheries were most affected by extreme climate change events and identified two case studies on which the thesis focuses: Nayarit (Mexico) and Shikoku (Japan). “These results make up the first chapter of the thesis, which was recently published in the scientific journal Communications Earth & Environment,” says Elías, who, after successfully completing the Nayarit case study last summer, will apply the same methodology to the island of Shikoku, where she has been based since mid-January.
Source: DUVI