Marine Fishing Case Study

Assessing the vulnerability of coastal fishing communities to climate change: A case study of pacific sardine fisheries, Japan.

1.Introduction

Climate change has a substantial impact on marine resources (Hoegh-Guldberg and Bruno., 2010) and therefore on coastal community. Among the many marine resources, major concerns are mostly shown on fish due to its direct linkage to human food consumption and contribution to the protein intake. Likewise many coastal countries, fish is also one of the major seafood resources exploited in the waters of Japan. Japan, once the world's largest producer and still the major user of sardine fish, relies mainly on landings by her own fleet. Recently, however, dwindling domestic catches have forced Japan to increase

Exploring the potential measures to adapt to changing climatic condition.

2.Materials/Methods

2.1.Study sites:

Socioeconomic data will be collected from several coastal fishing communities in the coast of Japan. Sites will be selected based on the important sardine fishing community those are accessible and occupied within the a similar spectrum of social and environmental conditions (Cinner et al., 2009).

2.2. Data collection and methods:

Several different research approaches have been developed to examine the vulnerability of a particular community to environmental change (Adger and Vincent, 2005; Bene, 2009; Brooks et al., 2005; Cutter, 1996; Yohe and Tol, 2002). These approaches are typically based on three key dimensions of vulnerability: (1) exposure; (2) sensitivity; and (3) adaptive capacity. A purposive sampling will be conducted to collect the data. The purposive sampling is an appropriate strategy for exploratory studies of communities (Agrawal, 2001). . For each site, exposure data will be obtained based on remote sensing data from selected zones (2) sensitivity; and (3) adaptive capacity, based on socioeconomic surveys (McClanahan et al., 2009).

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