Strategic planning could reduce farm-scale mariculture impacts on marine biodiversity while expanding seafood production.

Mariculture is one of the fastest growing global markets. Although it has potential to improve livelihoods and facilitate economic growth, it can negatively impact marine biodiversity. Here we estimate local cumulative environmental impacts from current and future (2050) mariculture production on marine biodiversity (20,013 marine fauna), while accounting for species range shifts under climate change.

Conservation benefits of a large marine protected area network that spans multiple ecosystems.

Marine protected areas (MPAs) are widely implemented tools for long-term ocean conservation and resource management. Assessments of MPA performance have largely focused on specific ecosystems individually and have rarely evaluated performance across multiple ecosystems either in an individual MPA or across an MPA network. We evaluated the conservation performance of 59 MPAs in California's large MPA network, which encompasses 4 primary ecosystems (surf zone, kelp forest, shallow reef, deep reef) and 4 bioregions, and identified MPA attributes that best explain performance.

Global estimation of dietary micronutrient inadequacies: a modelling analysis.

Background: Inadequate micronutrient intakes and related deficiencies are a major challenge to global public health. Analyses over the past 10 years have assessed global micronutrient deficiencies and inadequate nutrient supplies, but there have been no global estimates of inadequate micronutrient intakes. We aimed to estimate the global prevalence of inadequate micronutrient intakes for 15 essential micronutrients and to identify dietary nutrient gaps in specific demographic groups and countries.

A diverse portfolio of marine protected areas can better advance global conservation and equity.

Marine protected areas (MPAs) are widely used for ocean conservation, yet the relative impacts of various types of MPAs are poorly understood. We estimated impacts on fish biomass from no-take and multiple-use (fished) MPAs, employing a rigorous matched counterfactual design with a global dataset of >14,000 surveys in and around 216 MPAs. Both no-take and multiple-use MPAs generated positive conservation outcomes relative to no protection (58.

A marine protected area network does not confer community structure resilience to a marine heatwave across coastal ecosystems.

Marine protected areas (MPAs) have gained attention as a conservation tool for enhancing ecosystem resilience to climate change. However, empirical evidence explicitly linking MPAs to enhanced ecological resilience is limited and mixed. To better understand whether MPAs can buffer climate impacts, we tested the resistance and recovery of marine communities to the 2014-2016 Northeast Pacific heatwave in the largest scientifically designed MPA network in the world off the coast of California, United States.

Estimating national and subnational nutrient intake distributions of global diets.

Background: Access to high-quality dietary intake data is central to many nutrition, epidemiology, economic, environmental, and policy applications. When data on individual nutrient intakes are available, they have not been consistently disaggregated by sex and age groups, and their parameters and full distributions are often not publicly available.

Objectives: We sought to derive usual intake distributions for as many nutrients and population subgroups as possible, use these distributions to estimate nutrient intake inadequacy, compare these distributions and evaluate the implications of their shapes on the estimation of inadequacy, and make these distributions publicly available.

The value of monitoring in efficiently and adaptively managing biotoxin contamination in marine fisheries.

Harmful algal blooms (HABs) can produce biotoxins that accumulate in seafood species targeted by commercial, recreational, and subsistence fisheries and pose an increasing risk to public health as well as fisher livelihoods, recreational opportunities, and food security. Designing biotoxin monitoring and management programs that protect public health with minimal impacts to the fishing communities that underpin coastal livelihoods and food systems is critically important, especially in regions with worsening HABs due to climate change. This study reviews the history of domoic acid monitoring and management in the highly lucrative U.

Expanding ocean food production under climate change.

As the human population and demand for food grow, the ocean will be called on to provide increasing amounts of seafood. Although fisheries reforms and advances in offshore aquaculture (hereafter 'mariculture') could increase production, the true future of seafood depends on human responses to climate change. Here we investigated whether coordinated reforms in fisheries and mariculture could increase seafood production per capita under climate change.

Aquatic foods to nourish nations.

Despite contributing to healthy diets for billions of people, aquatic foods are often undervalued as a nutritional solution because their diversity is often reduced to the protein and energy value of a single food type ('seafood' or 'fish'). Here we create a cohesive model that unites terrestrial foods with nearly 3,000 taxa of aquatic foods to understand the future impact of aquatic foods on human nutrition. We project two plausible futures to 2030: a baseline scenario with moderate growth in aquatic animal-source food (AASF) production, and a high-production scenario with a 15-million-tonne increased supply of AASFs over the business-as-usual scenario in 2030, driven largely by investment and innovation in aquaculture production.

Evaluating impacts of forage fish abundance on marine predators.

Forage fish-small, low trophic level, pelagic fish such as herrings, sardines, and anchovies-are important prey species in marine ecosystems and also support large commercial fisheries. In many parts of the world, forage fish fisheries are managed using precautionary principles that target catch limits below the maximum sustainable yield. However, there are increasing calls to further limit forage fish catch to safeguard their fish, seabird, and marine mammal predators.

The future of food from the sea.

Global food demand is rising, and serious questions remain about whether supply can increase sustainably. Land-based expansion is possible but may exacerbate climate change and biodiversity loss, and compromise the delivery of other ecosystem services. As food from the sea represents only 17% of the current production of edible meat, we ask how much food we can expect the ocean to sustainably produce by 2050.

Realistic fisheries management reforms could mitigate the impacts of climate change in most countries.

Although climate change is altering the productivity and distribution of marine fisheries, climate-adaptive fisheries management could mitigate many of the negative impacts on human society. We forecast global fisheries biomass, catch, and profits to 2100 under three climate scenarios (RCPs 4.5, 6.

Response to Comment on "Impacts of historical warming on marine fisheries production".

Szuwalski argues that varying age structure can affect surplus production and that recruitment is a better metric of productivity. We explain how our null model controlled for age structure and other processes as explanations for the temperature-production relationship. Surplus production includes growth, recruitment, and other processes and provides a more complete description of food production impacts than does recruitment alone.

Impacts of historical warming on marine fisheries production.

Climate change is altering habitats for marine fishes and invertebrates, but the net effect of these changes on potential food production is unknown. We used temperature-dependent population models to measure the influence of warming on the productivity of 235 populations of 124 species in 38 ecoregions. Some populations responded significantly positively ( = 9 populations) and others responded significantly negatively ( = 19 populations) to warming, with the direction and magnitude of the response explained by ecoregion, taxonomy, life history, and exploitation history.

Capacity shortfalls hinder the performance of marine protected areas globally.

Marine protected areas (MPAs) are increasingly being used globally to conserve marine resources. However, whether many MPAs are being effectively and equitably managed, and how MPA management influences substantive outcomes remain unknown. We developed a global database of management and fish population data (433 and 218 MPAs, respectively) to assess: MPA management processes; the effects of MPAs on fish populations; and relationships between management processes and ecological effects.

A Mixed-Method Approach for Quantifying Illegal Fishing and Its Impact on an Endangered Fish Species.

Illegal harvest is recognized as a widespread problem in natural resource management. The use of multiple methods for quantifying illegal harvest has been widely recommended yet infrequently applied. We used a mixed-method approach to evaluate the extent, character, and motivations of illegal gillnet fishing in Lake Hovsgol National Park, Mongolia and its impact on the lake's fish populations, especially that of the endangered endemic Hovsgol grayling (Thymallus nigrescens).

High-levels of microplastic pollution in a large, remote, mountain lake.

Despite the large and growing literature on microplastics in the ocean, little information exists on microplastics in freshwater systems. This study is the first to evaluate the abundance, distribution, and composition of pelagic microplastic pollution in a large, remote, mountain lake. We quantified pelagic microplastics and shoreline anthropogenic debris in Lake Hovsgol, Mongolia.

Novel pathways for injury from offshore oil spills: direct, sublethal and indirect effects of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill on pelagic Sargassum communities.

The pelagic brown alga Sargassum forms an oasis of biodiversity and productivity in an otherwise featureless ocean surface. The vast pool of oil resulting from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill came into contact with a large portion of the Gulf of Mexico's floating Sargassum mats. Aerial surveys performed during and after the oil spill show compelling evidence of loss and subsequent recovery of Sargassum.