The popular fish could soon be replaced by other species such as John Dory and red mullet, forcing those who wish to eat local fish to change their diets accordingly.
The study reveals that the North Sea has warmed four times faster than the global average in the last 40 years and predicts further warming over the coming century.
The researchers developed a model that combined long-term fisheries datasets and climate model projections from the Met Office to predict the abundance and distribution of the UK’s favourite fish over the next 50 years.
The team including researchers from Exeter and Bristol found that, as the North Sea warms, species will have little capacity to move northwards to avoid warming temperatures, since habitat of a suitable depth is not available. Due to higher temperatures, many of the species studied are predicted to reduce in relative abundance.
Louise Rutterford, postgraduate researcher in Biosciences at the University of Exeter, said: “Our study suggests that we will see proportionally less of some of the species we eat most of as they struggle to cope with warming conditions in the North Sea. We provide new insight into how important local depths and associated habitats are to these commercial species. It’s something that is not always captured in existing models that predict future fish distributions.”
Dr Steve Simpson, Senior Lecturer in Marine Biology & Global Change at the University of Exeter, said the findings are important for both consumers and the fishing industry: "We will see a real changing of the guard in the next few decades. Our models predict cold water species will be squeezed out, with warmer water fish likely to take their place. For sustainable UK fisheries, we need to move on from haddock & chips and look to Southern Europe for our gastronomic inspiration.”
‘Future fish distributions constrained by depth in warming seas’ by Louise Rutterford, Stephen Simpson, Simon Jennings, Mark Johnson, Julia Blanchard, Pieter-Jan Schön, David Sims, Jonathan Tinker and Martin Genner is published in the journal Nature Climate Change.