As global populations grow, our reliance on the ocean for food has never been higher, yet the stability of marine aquaculture faces an uncertain future under a warming climate.

Knowledge gap

While climate impacts have been projected for some finfish and bivalves, approximately 62% of global marine aquaculture production—worth over 55 billion US dollars—remains unassessed for climate sensitivity. Crucial groups such as algae, which constitute the majority of biomass, and crustaceans, the most valuable per weight, have been largely overlooked in long-term global projections.

Main approach

Our research group evaluated the climate exposure of 327 marine species—including algae, crustaceans, finfish, molluscs, tunicates, and echinoderms—across their native geographic ranges. We utilized a climate dissimilarity index to quantify the difference between current environmental conditions and those projected by the end of the century. The study analyzed these shifts across three distinct Shared Socioeconomic Pathway (SSP) scenarios, ranging from a “sustainability” future to “fossil fuel development.”

Technological challenge

To address the lack of data for many species and the complexity of shifting ocean variables, we employed advanced data science pipelines:

We used the Bio-ORACLE computational pipeline to generate high-resolution global climate layers for variables including sea temperature, dissolved oxygen, and salinity.

Our approach utilized the Mahalanobis distance to calculate “sigma dissimilarity,” a metric that normalizes climate novelty based on local intra-annual variability, ensuring meaningful comparisons across different dimensions.

We integrated modeled range maps from Aquamaps with manually generated distributions for 80 species derived from literature and databases like FishBase and AlgaeBase.

Main finding

The results demonstrate a stark contrast between climate futures. Under the sustainable SSP1-1.9 scenario (1.5°C warming), 41% of Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ) remain entirely unexposed to climate novelty, and high-value groups like crustaceans and echinoderms remain safe. However, as the 1.5°C threshold was surpassed in 2024, more severe scenarios must be considered. Under high-emission pathways (SSP3-7.0 and SSP5-8.5), all current aquaculture regions are projected to experience climate dissimilarity, with semi-enclosed regions like the Baltic, Black, and Red Seas facing the most extreme environmental shifts.

Main implications

These findings underscore that widespread mitigation is necessary to ensure the resilience of global food security. For conservation and industry management:

Cultivating species within their native ranges should be prioritized to reduce the risks associated with non-native species escapes and pathogen introductions.

Major producers like China, India, and Norway may need to implement within-country relocation or transition to more resilient strains to adapt to changing local climates.

Some regions, such as Argentina, Pakistan, and Tuvalu, represent significant opportunities for future aquaculture expansion as they are projected to remain climate-resilient even under higher emission scenarios.