Climate change and aquaculture: Considering biological response and resources

This review explores the potential effects of climate change stressors on aquaculture biology and resources needed to support decision-making for vulnerability assessment, planned adaptation, and strategic research development. Climate change-mediated physiochemical outcomes important to aquaculture include extreme weather, precipitation and surge-based flooding, water stress, ocean acidification, sea-level rise, saltwater intrusion, and changes to temperature, salinity, and dissolved oxygen.

Culture practices, environment, and region affect stressor exposure, and biological response between species or populations are not universal. Response to a climate change stressor will be a function of where changes occur relative to optimal ranges and tolerance limits of an organism's life stage and physiological processes; the average magnitude of the stressor over the production cycle; stressor rate of change; variation, frequency, duration, and magnitude of extremes; epigenetic expression, genetic strain, and variation within and between populations; health and nutrition; and simultaneous stressor occurrence.