Presenting Iratxe´s research on adaptation to Climate Change in industrial fisheries

As part of Campus Do Mar doctoral program, students are assigned an Advisory Committee to monitor their progress and provide feedback and suggestions once a year during their doctoral studies. Last July, FOL PhD candidate Iratxe Rubio had her first meeting with the committee, where she presented a general overview of her thesis, focused on adaptation to Climate Change in industrial fisheries.

Iratxe´s committee was formed by Dr. Alistair Hobday from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO, Australia)  and Dr. Francisco Saborido Rey from the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC, Spain), as well as Dr. Elena Ojea from FOL (University of Vigo), Iratxe´s PhD supervisor.  All of them provided very useful feedback permitting Iratxe to improve her research proposal.

The overall objective of Iratxe’s PhD is to study current and future adaptation to climate change in an international fishery targeting tropical tunas. International fisheries are impacted by climate change due to changes in species distribution, which may affect fishing agreements regulating access to the resources. However, little is known about the implications of climate change on the fisheries social-ecological system (SES) as a whole, or how the system can better adapt in order to face Climate Change. These are crucial starting points for Iratxe’s research, good luck!