Model projection of the effect of climate change and fishing pressure on key species of the South East Asia Seas

The dataset contain Projection from the Size-Spectra Bioclimatic Envelop Model (SS-DBEM), this work was part of the GCRF Blue communities Programme (www.blue-communities.org). The model provides distribution and abundance and/or biomass of fish and other species of commercial interest under climate change and fishing pressure. The model outputs are yearly abundance/biomass on a 0.5-by-0.5 degree grid, covering the period from 2000 to 2098. Further description of the model and relevant references are listed in the following file: Guide-fish-model-output-use.docx

The model was run under two climate scenario: RCP4.5 and RCP8.5, with different combinations of fishing pressure expressed as the Maximum Sustainable Yield (MSY) for the following values: 0 (no fishing, climate change alone will cause variation in fish biomass), 1 (sustainable fishing), 2, 3 (overfishing), and, 4 (overfishing with destructive practice). The intent is not to reproduce current fishing level but to provide a range of scenarios with which the future of fisheries can be explored.

We projected fish species that were identified as key in the South East Asia seas region by our regional partners.The full list is provided in document: Fish-list-modelguide.xlsx

There are 4 zip files that contain the model outputs of in either abundance (number of fish) or biomass grams of fish) for the two climate scenario. For example Biomass-RCP45.zip will contain model outputs in biomass for projections under RCP4.5 and all MSY. within the zip files are .csv files of the outputs for each species under the 5 MSY (0 to 4), the individual file names identify the species (identified by a 6digit code), the output provided (abundance or biomass), the RCP (8.5 or 4.5), and the MSY (0, 1, 2, 3, or 4). For example the file labelled 600107-Abundance-rcp85-msy4.csv contains the outputs for species 600107 (Skipjack tuna, Katsuwonnus pelamis), as abundance, under RCP8.5 with MSY4. Headers indicate what is in each column (latitude, longitude and year).

Note: some knowledge of Python, R, or a similar software is recommended to ensure easy of use.