Climate change continues to alter the productivity of commercially and culturally important fisheries with major consequences for food security and coastal economies. We provide the first, multi‐model projections of changes in the distribution and productivity of 18 key fish stocks across seven European regional seas spanning the Mediterranean to the Arctic, using 11 state‐of‐the‐art bio‐ecological models. Our projections indi...

Populations of fishes provide valuable services for billions of people, but face diverse and interacting threats that jeopardize their sustainability. Human population growth and intensifying resource use for food, water, energy and goods are compromising fish populations through a variety of mechanisms, including overfishing, habitat degradation and declines in water quality. The important challenges raised by these issues ha...

The damselfish Chromis chromis is typically the most abundant fish species in the rocky littoral environment of the Mediterranean Sea, where it feeds in huge shoals on incoming zooplankton and rests near the seabed each night. Research has shown that large populations of C. chromis play a fundamental role by transferring carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus directly from the pelagic system to the littoral in the form of solid and l...

As a result of long‐term climate change, regions of the ocean with low oxygen concentrations are predicted to occur more frequently and persist for longer periods of time in the future. When low levels of oxygen are present, this places additional pressure on marine organisms to meet their metabolic requirements, with implications for growth, feeding and reproduction. Extensive research has been carried out on the effects of a...

Fisheries and aquaculture production, imports, exports and equitability of distribution determine the supply of aquatic food to people. Aquatic food security is achieved when a food supply is sufficient, safe, sustainable, shockproof and sound: sufficient, to meet needs and preferences of people; safe, to provide nutritional benefit while posing minimal health risks; sustainable, to provide food now and for future generations;...

The food habits of Melanogrammus aeglefinus were explored and contrasted across multiple north‐eastern and north‐western Atlantic Ocean ecosystems, using databases that span multiple decades. The results show that among all ecosystems, echinoderms are a consistent part of M. aeglefinus diet, but patterns emerge regarding where and when M. aeglefinus primarily eat fishes v . echinoderms. Melanogrammus aeglefinus does not regula...

To understand changes in ecosystems, the appropriate scale at which to study them must be determined. Large marine ecosystems ( LME s) cover thousands of square kilometres and are a useful classification scheme for ecosystem monitoring and assessment. However, averaging across LME s may obscure intricate dynamics within. The purpose of this study is to mathematically determine local and regional patterns of ecological change w...

An ecomorphological method was developed, with a focus on predation functions, to define functional groups in the Celtic Sea fish community. Eleven functional traits, measured for 930 individuals from 33 species, led to 11 functional groups. Membership of functional groups was linked to body size and taxonomy. For seven species, there were ontogenetic changes in group membership. When diet composition, expressed as the proport...

Views expressed on the potential impact of ocean acidification range from wholesale degradation of marine ecosystems through to no discernable impact with minimal consequences. Constraining this range of predictions is necessary for the development of informed policy and management. The direct biological impacts of acidification occur at the molecular and cellular level; however, it is the expression of these effects at the po...

Feeding preferences of Celtic Sea fishes were investigated using a database of stomach content records, collected between 1977 and 1994. The diet of cod Gadus morhua , hake Merluccius merluccius , megrim Lepidorhombus whiffiagonis , whiting Merlangius merlangus and saithe Pollachius virens changed markedly as the animals grew larger, and although large predators generally chose larger bodied prey, the variability of prey sizes...

Trophic relationships between four taxa of fish parasite (Cestoda, Nematoda, Isopoda, Copepoda) and their hosts ( Gasterosteus aculeatus, Merlangius merlangus, Boops boops, Platichthys flesus ) were investigated using stable isotopes of carbon and nitrogen. δ 15 N differences between parasite and host were unlike those conventionally observed among consumers and their diets. In no case were parasites enriched in 15N with respe...