title: Climate and fishing steer ecosystem regeneration to uncertain economic futures.
abstract: Overfishing of large predatory fish populations has resulted in lasting restructurings of entire marine food webs worldwide, with serious socio-economic consequences. Fortunately, some degraded ecosystems show signs of recovery. A key challenge for ecosystem management is to anticipate the degree to which recovery is possible. By applying a statistical food-web model, using the Baltic Sea as a case study, we show that under current temperature and salinity conditions, complete recovery of this heavily altered ecosystem will be impossible. Instead, the ecosystem regenerates towards a new ecological baseline. This new baseline is characterized by lower and more variable biomass of cod, the commercially most important fish stock in the Baltic Sea, even under very low exploitation pressure. Furthermore, a socio-economic assessment shows that this signal is amplified at the level of societal costs, owing to increased uncertainty in biomass and reduced consumer surplus. Specifically, the combined economic losses amount to approximately 120 million € per year, which equals half of today's maximum economic yield for the Baltic cod fishery. Our analyses suggest that shifts in ecological and economic baselines can lead to higher economic uncertainty and costs for exploited ecosystems, in particular, under climate change.
authors.affiliation: Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University, Kräftriket 2B, Stockholm 106 91, Sweden thorsten.blenckner@su.se.
authors.forename: Thorsten
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Blenckner
authors.affiliation: Instituto Español de Oceanografía, Centro Oceanográfico de Cádiz, Puerto Pesquero, Muelle de Levante, Cadiz 11006, Spain Centre for Ecological and Evolutionary Synthesis (CEES), Department of Biosciences, University of Oslo, PO Box 1066 Blindern, Oslo 0316, Norway.
authors.forename: Marcos
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Llope
authors.affiliation: Institute of Hydrobiology and Fisheries Sciences, Center for Earth System Research and Sustainability, University of Hamburg, Grosse Elbstrasse 133, Hamburg 22767, Germany.
authors.forename: Christian
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Möllmann
authors.affiliation: Department of Economics, Christian Albrechts Universität zu Kiel, Olshausenstraße 40, Kiel 24118, Germany.
authors.forename: Rudi
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Voss
authors.affiliation: Department of Economics, Christian Albrechts Universität zu Kiel, Olshausenstraße 40, Kiel 24118, Germany.
authors.forename: Martin F
authors.initials: MF
authors.lastname: Quaas
authors.affiliation: Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Department of Aquatic Resources, Institute of Marine Research, Turistgatan 5, Lysekil 45330, Sweden.
authors.forename: Michele
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Casini
authors.affiliation: Centre for Ocean Life, National Institute of Aquatic Resources, Technical University of Denmark, Charlottenlund Castle, Charlottenlund 2920, Denmark.
authors.forename: Martin
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Lindegren
authors.affiliation: Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University, Kräftriket 2B, Stockholm 106 91, Sweden Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, PO Box 50005, Stockholm 104 05, Sweden.
authors.forename: Carl
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Folke
authors.affiliation: Centre for Ecological and Evolutionary Synthesis (CEES), Department of Biosciences, University of Oslo, PO Box 1066 Blindern, Oslo 0316, Norway.
authors.forename: Nils
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Chr Stenseth
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001454:Baltic States; D018533:Biomass; D057231:Climate Change / Q000191:economics*; D003247:Conservation of Natural Resources / Q000191:economics*; D017753:Ecosystem; D005398:Fisheries / Q000191:economics*; D005399:Fishes; D020387:Food Chain; D005544:Forecasting; D048389:Gadus morhua; D009792:Oceans and Seas
keywords: Baltic Sea; cod; ecosystem-based management; food-web dynamics; regime shifts; shifting baseline