Introduction to the special issue on the emerging fisheries in a changing Arctic

Abstract

With the loss of sea ice and a longer open water season, exploitation of natural resources in the Arctic has been increasing and the Arctic marine environment has been coined the “new Klondike” (Christiansen et al. 2014). One resource predicted to be increasingly exploited in the Arctic is fisheries (Tai et al. 2019). However, a disconnect remains between the increasing pressure on Arctic fisheries and the available biological knowledge (demographic, abundance, etc.) of the harvested species. For example, only five of the 63 Arctic fish species targeted by fisheries have been evaluated by the International Union for Conservation of Nature for their current conservation status (Christiansen et al. 2014). In 2012, an Open Letter organized by the Pew Environment Group was signed by more than 2000 scientists from 67 countries to express concerns regarding fisheries in unregulated Arctic waters. Several examples from other fisheries have shown that when large-scale commercial exploitation moves faster than the knowledge of the stock, there is a high risk of significant detrimental impact on the stock exploited (Jackson et al. 2001).