FOL participated in the 5th ECCWO in Bergen

The fifth ECCWO symposium was held last 17^th – 21^st of April 2023 in Bergen, Norway aimed at better understanding the climate effects on the ocean’s ecosystems and what adaptation and mitigation measures could look like. The symposium was co-organized by the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES)​, the North Pacific Marine Science Organization (PICES), the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) of UNESCO, and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).

FOL’s principal investigator Elena presented the adaptations of Galician small-pelagicfishers to hypothetical future climate change scenarios. These results were a continuation of the results obtained by FOL’s former Ph.D. student and now postdoctoral researcher Diego Salgueiro. Xochitl Elías, FOL’s Ph.D. student, presented her second thesis chapter based on the fieldwork she conducted in August-November 2021 in the climate change hotspot, Nayarit, Mexico. There she analyzes the factors influencing fishers’ decision to adopt transformative responses under increasing catch decrease scenarios. In her oral presentation, she showed how the social capital and management system can largely affect fishers’ decision to look for a new main livelihood and/or completely exit the small-scale fisheries.

The conference was a great opportunity for the FOL members to discuss the preliminary results with field experts from around the world and build new collaborations that can help to bring together new innovative approaches to the new and uncertain challenges brought about by climate change.