Effects of Fishing on the Sensitivity of Fisheries to Climate Variability

Recent findings in population dynamics indicate that age structured populations with density-dependent recruitment respond to variability in survival or growth rate in a way that is more sensitive to generational time scales and very long time scales, a phenomenon termed cohort resonance.  Furthermore, this sensitivity and the overall variance increase with fishing.  We present several examples to show how longer lived species respond differently than shorter lived species, and the differences caused by different egg-recruit relationships and whether the environmental forcing is in growth or survival rates.  We describe the implications for climate change.