Colette C C Wabnitz

• PhD
• Lead Scientist at Stanford University

Fishmeal and fish oil (FMFO) are critical inputs for the compound aquatic feeds sustaining the fed aquaculture sector, yet there is limited publicly available information on the location of FMFO production factories around the globe. This makes it difficult to assess the environmental, social, and economic impacts of individual factories and the in...

A central barrier to effective governance and accountability in fisheries is the limited transparency of corporate ownership. Transshipment—the transfer of catches, fuel, parts, or crew between fishing and cargo vessels known as reefers—is often criticized for its opacity and poor governance. Better insight into the beneficial ownership of vessels...

As climate change reshapes marine ecosystems, the dynamics of fish stocks are undergoing rapid transformation. Understanding these shifts and their multifaceted impacts demands more than just scientific inquiry; it necessitates a fusion of knowledge, collaboration, and action. However, the translation of cutting-edge research on the changing distri...

The adverse impacts of climate change on aquatic food systems (AFS) and the people who depend on AFS for livelihood security are inequitably distributed between and within countries. People facing the highest risks and experiencing the severest impacts of climate change are those who already experience multidimensional inequalities in their lives,...

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic of 2020 was a reminder of society’s vulnerability in the face of natural upheavals, leading to widespread unemployment and increased poverty. Simultaneously, human activities have precipitated large-scale environmental degradation and catastrophic climate change. Here, we conduct a global-scale, 186-...

Climate change impacts have been particularly acute and rapid in the Arctic, raising concerns about the conservation of key ecologically and culturally significant species (e.g. beluga whales, Arctic cod), with consequences for the Indigenous community groups in the region. Here, we build on an Ecopath with Ecosim model for the Canadian Beaufort Se...

Rising ocean temperatures threaten marine ecosystems and food security worldwide. Yet, our current understanding of how climate change affects global marine fisheries often overlooks critical seasonal dynamics that govern ecosystem function. To address this gap, we compiled a global dataset for 187 countries between 1950 to 2018 and employed fixed...

Climate change will push the planet worryingly close to its boundaries, across all latitudes and levels of development. One question therefore is the extent to which climate change does (and will) severely affect societies' livelihoods, health, well-being, and cultures. This paper discusses the "severe climate risks" concept developed under Working...

The Nature Futures Framework (NFF) is a heuristic tool for co-creating positive futures for nature and people. It seeks to open up a diversity of futures through mainly three value perspectives on nature – Nature for Nature, Nature for Society, and Nature as Culture. This paper describes how the NFF can be applied in modelling to support decision-m...

The blue economy is being promoted as capable of achieving sustainability and prosperity, fair use of the ocean and the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Ensuring a more equitable distribution of goods and services provided by the ocean represents a major challenge. There is overwhelming evidence that current access to ocean benefits and res...

The ocean is important for everyone—it produces oxygen and food, stores carbon and heat, offers space for economic activities and recreation, and continues to inspire and support culture and well-being. Globally, the value of key ocean assets has been estimated at US$24 trillion and the value of derived services at between $1.5 trillion and $6 tril...

Blue foods, sourced in aquatic environments, are important for the economies, livelihoods, nutritional security and cultures of people in many nations. They are often nutrient rich¹, generate lower emissions and impacts on land and water than many terrestrial meats², and contribute to the health³, wellbeing and livelihoods of many rural communities...

Transforming the rapidly growing ocean economy into a ‘blue economy’ based on principles of sustainability, equity and inclusivity is crucial. We contend that marine biotechnology is not on this trajectory and that a more holistic approach for people and nature is needed to bring marine biotechnology into the blue economy.

Monitoring marine use is essential to effective management but is extremely challenging, particularly where capacity and resources are limited. To overcome these limitations, satellite imagery has emerged as a promising tool for monitoring marine vessel activities that are difficult to observe through publicly available vessel-tracking data. Howeve...

Blue foods play a central role in food and nutrition security for billions of people and are a cornerstone of the livelihoods, economies, and cultures of many coastal and riparian communities. Blue foods are extraordinarily diverse, are often rich in essential micronutrients and fatty acids, and can be produced in ways that are more environmentally...

Understanding mechanisms that promote social-ecological resilience can inform future adaptation strategies. Among seafood dependent communities, these can be illuminated by assessing change among fisheries portfolios. Here, in collaboration with a Coast Salish Nation in British Columbia, Canada, we used expert Indigenous knowledge and network analy...

The coral reefs of the Pitcairn Islands are in one of the most remote areas of the Pacific Ocean, and yet they are exposed to the impacts of anthropogenic climate change. The Pitcairn Islands Marine Protected Area was designated in 2016 and is one of the largest in the world, but the marine environment around these highly isolated islands remains p...

Injustices are prevalent in food systems, where the accumulation of vast wealth is possible for a few, yet one in ten people remain hungry. Here, for 194 countries we combine aquatic food production, distribution and consumption data with corresponding national policy documents and, drawing on theories of social justice, explore whether barriers to...

The morphology, physiology and behavior of marine organisms have been a valuable source of inspiration for solving conceptual and design problems. Here, we introduce this rich and rapidly expanding field of marine biomimetics, and identify it as a poorly articulated and often overlooked element of the ocean economy associated with substantial monet...

Rebuilding overexploited marine populations is an important step to achieve the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goal 14—Life Below Water. Mitigating major human pressures is required to achieve rebuilding goals. Climate change is one such key pressure, impacting fish and invertebrate populations by changing their biomass and biogeography. H...

Warming increases the metabolic rates of fishes and drives their oxygen demands above environmental oxygen supply, leading to declines in fish growth and smaller population sizes. Given the wide variability in species' sensitivity to changing temperature and oxygen levels, warming and oxygen limitation may be altering the composition of fish commun...

Blue foods play a central role in food and nutrition security for billions of people and are a cornerstone of the livelihoods, economies, and cultures of many coastal and riparian communities. Blue foods are extraordinarily diverse, are often rich in essential micronutrients and fatty acids, and can often be produced in ways that are more environme...

Arctic ecosystems are at risk to climate impacts, challenging existing conservation measures such as protected areas. This study aims to describe the ecological dynamics of the Canadian Beaufort Sea Shelf (BSS) ecosystem and the Tarium Niryutait Marine Protected Area (TNMPA) under historical changes in sea surface temperature and sea ice extent. Us...

The organisms that inhabit Oxygen Minimum Zones (OMZ) have specialized adaptations that allow them to survive within a very narrow range of environmental conditions. Consequently, even small environmental perturbations can result in local species distribution shifts that alter ecosystem trophodynamics. Here, we examined the effect of changing sea w...

Integrated management of coral reef foods, as a highly diverse set of blue foods, can contribute to addressing the dual challenges of malnutrition and biodiversity loss. Advances in nutrition research have made it possible to understand nutritional benefits on a species by species basis, and to make comparisons with benefits derived from land-based...

Labor abuse on fishing vessels and illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing violate human rights, jeopardize food security, and deprive governments of revenues. We applied a multi-method approach, combining new empirical data with satellite information on fishing activities and vessel characteristics to map risks of labor abuse and IUU fis...

The biosphere crisis requires changes to existing business practices. We ask how corporations can become sustainability leaders, when constrained by multiple barriers to collaboration for biosphere stewardship. We describe how scientists motivated, inspired and engaged with ten of the world’s largest seafood companies, in a collaborative process ai...

Climate change is shifting the distribution of shared fish stocks between neighboring countries’ Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs) and the high seas. The timescale of these transboundary shifts determines how climate change will affect international fisheries governance. Here, we explore this timescale by coupling a large ensemble simulation of an Ea...

Climate change, unsustainable fishing, and land-based pollution (Ainsworth et al. 2016, Cinner et al. 2018, Hughes et al. 2018, Wenger et al. 2020) are among the top pressures to coral reefs globally, resulting in substantial losses of live coral cover (Eddy et al. 2021) and the loss of ecosystem services valued at more than $10 trillion dollars pe...

The Regional Organization for the Protection of the Marine Environment (ROPME) Sea Area (RSA) in the northern Indian Ocean, which comprises the Gulf, the Gulf of Oman and the northern Arabian Sea, already experiences naturally extreme environmental conditions and incorporates one of the world’s warmest seas. There is growing evidence that climate c...

Citation: Lincoln, S.; Buckley, P.; Howes, E.L.; Maltby, K.M.; Pinnegar, J.K.; Ali, T.S.; Alosairi, Y.; Al-Ragum, A.; Baglee, A.; Balmes, C.O.; et al.

The sustainability of global seafood supply to meet increasing demand is facing several challenges, including increasing consumption levels due to a growing human population, fisheries resources over-exploitation and climate change. Whilst growth in seafood production from capture fisheries is limited, global mariculture production is expanding. Ho...

Coastal communities SIDS and LDCs are unique in their position of vulnerability towards ocean-derived risks. They have high levels of exposure and sensitivity to these risks, in part owing to the heavy dependency on the sea for fisheries and tourism – core sectors that support their GDP, livelihoods as well as food security. The situation in these...

The prospect of a new era of blue growth poses unprecedented sustainability and governance challenges for the ocean, as marine ecosystems face cumulative pressures from local human impacts, global climate change and distal socioeconomic drivers. Driven by increasing consumption patterns, land-based sources decline, and technological progress, the h...

Both fisheries and tourism have been highlighted as pivotal sectors to achieving the SDGs. Women play important roles across fisheries value chains and throughout the tourism sector. Yet women’s roles, contributions, priorities and interests tend to be overlooked and undervalued across sectors as well as in policy and management. In addition, becau...

Despite their ecological role and multiple contributions to human societies, the distribution of Indo-Pacific seagrasses remains poorly known in many places. Herein, we outline a hierarchical spatially-explicit assessment framework to derive nation-wide synoptic knowledge of the distribution of seagrass species and communities. We applied the frame...

Extreme temperature events have occurred in all ocean basins in the past two decades with detrimental impacts on marine biodiversity, ecosystem functions, and services. However, global impacts of temperature extremes on fish stocks, fisheries, and dependent people have not been quantified. Using an integrated climate-biodiversity-fisheries-economic...

Small-scale fisheries and aquaculture (SSFA) provide livelihoods for over 100 million people and sustenance for ~1 billion people, particularly in the Global South. Aquatic foods are distributed through diverse supply chains, with the potential to be highly adaptable to stresses and shocks, but face a growing range of threats and adaptive challenge...

Empathy for nature is considered a prerequisite for sustainable interactions with the biosphere. Yet to date, empirical research on how to stimulate empathy remains scarce. Here, we investigate whether future scenarios can promote greater empathy for the oceans. Using a pre‐post empathy questionnaire, participants (N = 269) were presented with an o...

Aquatic foods from marine and freshwater systems are critical to the nutrition, health, livelihoods, economies and cultures of billions of people worldwide, but climate-related hazards may compromise their ability to provide these benefits. Here, we estimate national-level aquatic food system climate risk using an integrative food systems approach...

Climate change is shifting the distribution of shared fish stocks between neighboring countries’ Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ) and the high seas. The timescale of these transboundary shifts determines how climate change will affect international fisheries governance. Coupling a large ensemble simulation of an Earth system model to a species distri...

The Nature Futures Framework (NFF) is a heuristic tool for co-creating positive futures for nature and people. It seeks to open up a diversity of futures through mainly three value perspectives on nature – Nature for Nature, Nature for Society, Nature as Culture. In this paper, we describe how the NFF can be applied in modelling to support policy....

Humanity has never benefited more from the ocean as a source of food, livelihoods, and well-being, yet on a global scale this has been accompanied by trajectories of degradation and persistent inequity. Awareness of this has spurred policymakers to develop an expanding network of ocean governance instruments, catalyzed civil society pressure on the...

Marine capture fishery resources are declining, and demand for them is rising. These trends are suspected to incite conflict, but their effects have not been quantitatively examined. We applied a multi‐model ensemble approach to a global database of international fishery conflicts between 1974 and 2016 to test the supply‐induced scarcity hypothesis...

Ocean warming and deoxygenation are affecting the physiological performance of marine species by increasing their oxygen demand while reducing oxygen supply. Impacts on organisms (e.g., growth and reproduction) can eventually affect entire populations, altering macroecological dynamics and shifting species’ distribution ranges. To quantify the effe...

Recent studies suggest that the pervasive impacts on global fishery resources caused by stressors such as overfishing and climate change could dramatically increase the likelihood of fishery conflict. However, existing projections do not consider wider economic, social, or political trends when assessing the likelihood of, and influences on, future...

Transfer efficiency is the proportion of energy passed between nodes in food webs. It is an emergent, unitless property that is difficult to measure, and responds dynamically to environmental and ecosystem changes. Because the consequences of changes in transfer efficiency compound through ecosystems, slight variations can have large effects on foo...

Recent assessments of future risk to atoll habitability have focused on island erosion and submergence, and have overlooked the effects of other climate‐related drivers, as well as differences between ocean basins and island types. Here we investigate the cumulative risk arising from multiple drivers (sea‐level rise; changes in rainfall, ocean–atmo...

Anthropogenic and ecological impacts affect not only the environment, but also the livelihoods of the fishers and communities reliant on them. It is, therefore, crucial to study the entire chain of well-being for an ecosystem, from changing environmental conditions, to the impacts of humans and social processes, to the effect of high-level policies...

Aim Project shifts in the habitat suitability of 505 fish and invertebrate species in the Eastern Tropical Pacific that are likely to occur by the mid‐21st century under “high greenhouse gas emissions” (RCP 8.5) and “strong mitigation” (RCP 2.6) scenarios. Location The Eastern Tropical Pacific Ocean, a discrete biogeographic region from the Gulf o...

Regulatory boundaries and species distributions often do not align. This is especially the case for marine species crossing multiple Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs). Such movements represent a challenge for fisheries management, as policies tend to focus at the national level, yet international collaborations are needed to maximize long-term ecolog...

Coral reefs have been subject to mass coral bleaching, potentially causing rapid and widespread degradation of ecosystem services that depend on live coral cover, such as fisheries catch. Fisheries species in tropical waters associate with a wide range of habitats, so assessing the dependency of fisheries on coral reefs is important for guiding fis...

The global ocean is commonly partitioned into 4 biomes subdivided into 56 biogeochemical provinces (BGCPs) following the accepted division proposed by Longhurst in 1998. Each province corresponds to a unique regional environment that shapes biodiversity and constrains ecosystem structure and functions. Biogeochemical provinces are dynamic entities...

The global ocean is commonly partitioned into 4 biomes subdivided into 56 biogeochemical provinces (BGCPs) following the accepted division proposed by Longhurst in 1998. Each province corresponds to a unique regional environment that shapes biodiversity and constrains ecosystem structure and functions. Biogeochemical provinces are dynamic entities...

Life has evolved in the ocean for 3.7 billion years, resulting in a rich ‘ocean genome’, the ensemble of genetic material present in all marine biodiversity, including both the physical genes and the information they encode. Rapid advances in sequencing technologies and bioinformatics have enabled exploration of the ocean genome and are informing i...

The ‘ocean genome’ is the foundation upon which all marine ecosystems rest and is defined here as the ensemble of genetic material present in all marine biodiversity, including both the physical genes and the information they encode. The dynamics of the ocean genome enable organisms to adapt to diverse ecological niches and changing environmental c...

The ocean is important for everyone—it produces oxygen and food, stores carbon and heat, offers space for economic activities and recreation, and continues to inspire and support culture and well-being. Globally, the value of key ocean assets has been estimated at US$24 trillion and the value of derived services at between $1.5 trillion and $6 tril...

This paper examines the distribution of the goods and services provided by the ocean, existing inequities and the resulting impacts on the environment, human health, and income distribution now and in the future. The paper outlines the tensions and trade-offs, and presents recommendations for addressing some of the underlying and systemic features...

Previous studies have focused on changes in the geographical distribution of terrestrial biomes and species targeted by marine capture fisheries due to climate change impacts. Given mariculture's substantial contribution to global seafood production and its growing significance in recent decades, it is essential to evaluate the effects of climate c...

Recent assessments of future risk to atoll habitability have focused on island erosion and submergence, and have overlooked the effects of other climate-related drivers, as well as differences between ocean basins and island types. Here we investigate the cumulative risk arising from multiple drivers (sea-level rise; changes in rainfall, ocean-atmo...

Global change drivers, such as population growth, increasing consumption, inequity in resource distribution, overfishing, climate change and pollution, are challenging the sustainability of global coupled human-natural seafood production system. Modelling the linkages between the biophysical and socio-economic components of the seafood production s...

The workshop entitled ‘From visions to scenarios for nature and nature’s contributions to people for the 21st century’ was organized by the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) expert group on scenarios and models and its technical support unit, and hosted by the NF-UBC Nereus Program, the Peter Wall Institute f...

This final manuscript in the special issue on “Funding for ocean conservation and sustainable fisheries” is the result of a dialogue aimed at connecting lead authors of the special issue manuscripts with relevant policymakers and practitioners. The dialogue took place over the course of a two-day workshop in December 2018, and this “coda” manuscrip...

A suite of recent international commitments and aspirational targets related to ocean conservation and sustainable fisheries management suggest growing consensus among states regarding the urgency of action. Yet, securing adequate financial resources to achieve these goals will be a crucial hurdle for many countries and will depend on financing mec...

Universities are key players in the collection and commercialization of marine genetic resources. We argue that the research community can promote systematic disclosure of sample origin in patents, thereby taking a global responsibility for setting new norms of transparency that would influence ongoing policy processes and improve sharing of benefi...

This working paper examines how three different plausible future scenarios of social, economic and environmental development impact on the benefits derived from fisheries in ABNJ, particularly for developing countries, under climate change. Our analysis suggests that high seas fisheries are not economically viable across the three ocean futures. Fi...

This Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere1 in a Changing Climate (SROCC) was prepared following an IPCC Panel decision in 2016 to prepare three Special Reports during the Sixth Assessment Cycle2 . By assessing new scientific literature3 , the SROCC4 responds to government and observer organization proposals. The SROCC follows the other two Sp...

Canned fish is a healthy alternative to the poor-quality, imported, processed foods implicated in the rise of non-communicable diseases in Pacific Island countries. Increased availability and consumption of canned fish also promises to help fill the gap between sustainable coastal fish production and recommended intake of fish for good nutrition. T...

Who owns ocean biodiversity? This is an increasingly relevant question, given the legal uncertainties associated with the use of genetic resources from areas beyond national jurisdiction, which cover half of the Earth’s surface. We accessed 38 million records of genetic sequences associated with patents and created a database of 12,998 sequences ex...

Climate change-reflected in significant environmental changes such as warming, sea level rise, shifts in salinity, oxygen and other ocean conditions-is expected to impact marine organisms and associated fisheries. This study provides an assessment of the potential impacts on, and the vulnerability of, marine biodiversity and fisheries catches in th...

Climate change–reflected in significant environmental changes such as warming, sea level rise, shifts in salinity, oxygen and other ocean conditions–is expected to impact marine organisms and associated fisheries. This study provides an assessment of the potential impacts on, and the vulnerability of, marine biodiversity and fisheries catches in th...

Vulnerability indicators: Exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity. (DOCX)

Top 47 species important to fisheries in the region. Species are ordered by average catch size (tonnes). (DOCX)

Average annual total catch (in tonnes), Gulf catch (in tonnes) and proportion the latter represents overall by country. (DOCX)

Vulnerability of charismatic species to climate change impacts. (DOCX)

Map of occurrence records for the 55 species that were modelled in the world’s oceans, including the Gulf. Source: Natural Earth version 4.0.0 - http://www.naturalearthdata.com/. Figure created using MATLAB. (TIF)

Characteristics of all the priority marine species in the Gulf (ordered alphabetically) as obtained from FishBase [44], SeaLifeBase [45] and IUCN red list of threatened species [106]. TL–Trophic level. CR–Critically Endangered, EN–Endangered, VU–Vulnerable, NT–Near Threatened, LC–Least Concern, Data Deficient, NE–Not Evaluated. (DOCX)

Percent change in habitat suitability forall non-fish species in the Economic Exclusive Zones (EEZs) of the Gulf in 2090. Results are presented for the RCP 8.5 scenario and as average of the three niche models (BIOCLIM, NPPEN and ENFA). The error bars represent inter-model range. (TIF)