At the outset, I will refer to the question of privilege. Witnesses giving evidence from within the parliamentary precincts are protected by absolute privilege in respect of the evidence they give to the committee. This means they have a full defence in any defamation action for anything said at a committee meeting. However, witnesses are expected not to abuse this privilege and may be directed to cease giving evidence on an issue at the direction of the Chair. Witnesses should follow the direction of the Chair in this regard and are reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice to the effect that, as is reasonable, no adverse commentary should be made against an identifiable third person or entity.

I advise and remind members of the constitutional requirement that they must be physically present within the confines of the Leinster House complex in order to participate in public meetings. I will not permit a member to participate where they are not adhering to this constitutional requirement.

A member who attempts to participate from outside the precincts will be asked to leave the meeting. I ask any member participating via Microsoft Teams to confirm, prior to making their contribution to the meeting, that they are on the grounds of the Leinster House campus.

Members are reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice that they should not criticise or make charges against any person or entity by name or in such a way as to make him or her identifiable, or otherwise engage in speech that may be regarded as damaging to the good name of the person or entity. Therefore, if their statements are potentially defamatory about an identifiable person or entity, they will be directed to discontinue their remarks. It is imperative they comply with any such direction.

The agenda for today's meeting is the impacts of climate change on fish stocks. We are joined by representatives from Met Éireann; Dr. Tido Semmler, research meteorologist; Dr. Saji Varghese, head of research and applications; Dr. Markus Todt, research meteorologist; and Dr. Keith Lambkin, head of climate services. From the Atlantic Technological University marine and freshwater research centre, we are joined by Dr. Louise Vaughan. Representing the Marine Institute, we are joined by Dr. Ciaran Kelly and Mr. Graham Johnston.

The opening statements have been forwarded to members and I will allow witnesses five minutes to read their opening statement. Alternatively, they can have two minutes to give a brief synopsis of the statement and we will then proceed into questions and answers. I see that our Cathaoirleach has arrived. Having done all of that heavy lifting, I will vacate the Chair and invite our Cathaoirleach, Deputy McGuinness, to continue with the proceedings.

I timed that perfectly. I thank the Leas-Chathaoirleach for stepping into the bearna baoil for me in those few moments. I apologise for being late in joining the committee. Everyone is very welcome. As our Leas-Chathaoirleach has read the notice on privilege, I will introduce the panel of witnesses. That has already been done. He has done all of the heavy lifting. We will have a questions and answers session. We will give ten minutes for members to put the question and that has to include time for the answers. There will be clocks around the room so I ask members and witnesses to pay attention to that.

I invite the witnesses to give their opening statements. I ask them to give a two-minute synopsis, if that is okay. I invite Dr. Semmler to provide his opening statement first.

So, we have two minutes and not five?

We usually go for the two minute synopsis so could Dr. Semmler summarise in two minutes. It is okay if Dr. Semmler goes a little over as I am known as a very lenient Cathaoirleach - too lenient, sometimes. If Dr. Semmler would like to try to summarise in two minutes, that would be fantastic. That leaves more time for questions and answers in which we can tease out finer points.

Okay. I thank the committee for the invitation to be here together with my colleagues who have already been introduced. Climate change is no longer just a future threat. It is really a present day reality and weather patterns with intensifying extreme events are part of it, heightening risks for communities. Several records were broken in the last few years. For example, 2025 was the third warmest year on record, closely trailing 2024 and 2023. Ireland has been very similar in this respect.

The four years from 2022 to 2025 represent the warmest period in our national climate record, which dates back to 1900.

Certainly that has also affected marine heatwaves. There were two major marine heatwaves in 2023 and 2025.

Our high resolution climate projections for Ireland indicate continued warming. These projections have been created within the Met Éireann-funded TRANSLATE programme in collaboration with the Irish Centre for High-End Computing, ICHEC. The south-east and east would be especially affected by this strong warming, especially maximum summer temperatures. We also expect more frequent and intense heavy rainfall events, longer summer dry spells and rising coastal flood risks driven by warmer oceans and higher sea levels.

One major piece is the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation, AMOC, which many members might have heard about from the media. We project a gradual, limited weakening of the AMOC rather than a sudden shutdown of it. This still has important impacts like increased seasonality. That means stronger differences between summers and winters. Rainfall would be more pronounced in winter while we could have longer dry spells in summer. We should not completely forget about a low-likelihood, high-impact future that is still not off the cards. We are still researching this in national and international collaborations. If this risk is real we still have to consider it right now. It would of course have much more severe impacts. A tipping point could be already crossed in the middle of the century but it would still take several decades to a century to materialise. On the way to this more severe weakening of the AMOC there would be more extreme events expected around Ireland and sea level rise around our coasts might be affected by this. This is also a matter of active research. Direct measurements from 2004 onwards show only a slight weakening but a lot of natural fluctuations as well. We therefore have to continue observing to really see how the trend will materialise. A gradual decrease in the AMOC may partially offset global warming or cause slight cooling locally but it will increase extreme weather and seasonality, as I said.

What is very important is these risks are escalating but we are also doing active research in this. A nice example of a collaboration between the three institutions present here is the AtmosFish project which has been awarded to Dr. Vaughan of Atlantic Technological University. There we will significantly advance our understanding of how atmospheric variability impacts ocean ecosystem processes and, consequently, our vital fisheries in the North Atlantic.

I thank the committee for inviting me. Fish are a key component of marine ecosystems and because of this are major contributors to the food webs. This makes them particularly sensitive to climate-driven changes. However, fish species’ responses are not uniform and depend on multiple interacting factors. I am going to try to summarise quickly some of the areas where fish can be impacted by climate change, especially sea surface temperature.

Recruitment is an important measure of the health of a fish population. It is defined as the number of young fish, or recruits, entering potential fishing stocks in a given year. It is particularly important at early life stages. During the early life period the rates of mortality from predation and starvation are extremely high and fish are especially sensitive to environmental conditions, especially temperature. Climate-driven effects, especially warming, can affect distribution shifts as well. In response to ocean warming, the distributions of many marine fish species shift in a poleward direction.

As waters off south-west Ireland warm, smaller-bodied, warm water lusitanian species are expected to increase while larger-bodied, cold water boreal species are expected to decline. These changes may reflect both direct temperature effects and indirect effects mediated through recruitment and habitat suitability. A recent study carried out by the Atlantic Technological University, ATU, found that these expected large-scale biogeographic shifts have not occurred consistently across lusitanian and boreal species in Irish waters. Instead, these changes have been highly localised and species specific. While climate change remains an important driver, its effects on fish distributions in Irish waters are complex, spatially heterogeneous and closely linked with other ecological, oceanographic and anthropogenic factors.

As water temperature increases, the amount of oxygen the water can hold decreases. This can affect fish metabolism and physiology. What we expect to see happening is that fish will reach smaller adult sizes due to the combined effects of temperature and oxygen limitations. Climate change can also affect the early life stages and spawning. Spawning adults and embryos often have narrower thermal tolerance and this can create bottlenecks under a climate change environment. For many fish stocks in Irish waters, fishing pressure remains the primary driver of abundance. As ocean warming continues, however, climate-related effects are expected to become increasingly important. Therefore, well-managed fish stocks are generally more resilient to climate variability than depleted ones.

Climate change is already influencing Ireland’s marine environment, with observed effects on temperature, species distributions and ecosystem processes. These changes are expected to affect fish recruitment, productivity and community structure in complex and species-specific ways. Long-term monitoring is essential to detect and understand these changes. While there have been studies into the changing oceanographic variables such as sea surface temperature, there has been less research into linking oceanographic variables with broader climatic systems. Future work, such as the recently funded ATMOS-FISH project, which was mentioned by Dr. Semmler, is a joint collaboration between ATU, the Marine Institute and Met Éireann. The project will focus on strengthening links between atmospheric variables, ocean ecosystem processes and fisheries in the North Atlantic.

I thank the Cathaoirleach and committee members for the opportunity to come here today to speak to them on this matter. We have already heard how our colleagues in Met Éireann monitor the physical weather of the ocean, sea surface temperatures and the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation, AMOC, and our university colleagues explored the system modelling. The Marine Institute focuses on how this physical environment impacts on the biological resources of our oceans. Climate change is not uniform. It is complex and it is a chain reaction in terms of what we are measuring, affecting fish growth, reproduction and survival. Our long-term monitoring at the Marine Institute is essential to distinguish permanent climate impacts from natural variability, ensuring commercial fisheries remain viable.

Understanding climate impacts is a little bit like peeling back the layers of biological interactions. While physical warming is a primary driver, the actual impact on fisheries is dictated by complex second and third order interactions. Some of those are kind of counterintuitive. If we look at local populations, we will often find trends that do not match with the broader scale, and this should be borne in mind. It is not one size fits all. The Marine Institute provides value by empirically measuring these long-term changes through an enduring survey programme that we run year round. Our presence in the ports, including at Killybegs, Castletownbere, Dunmore East, Rossaveel and Greencastle, enables us to continually sample the outtake of the commercial fishery. This data on fish age, weight and maturity is vital for identifying indicators of productivity change. Each year the Marine Institute produces the stock book and this provides the specific advice required for sustainable management. The 2025 edition, which we included as a written submission here, has a chapter dealing with fisheries and ecosystems specifically. This provides the committee with some background information if members want to read that. The Marine Institute thus bridges the gap between the physical climate science and academic research. We have heard already how we are collaborating with the universities and with Met Éireann on the ATMOS-FISH project.

The members will hear us all repeat the same message, that the changes in the physical ocean environment are impacting Irish marine ecosystems with direct consequences for commercial fishing. While modelling can identify future trends, the Marine Institute provides the essential monitoring that allows the State to manage these changes in a timely fashion.

I thank the Cathaoirleach and welcome any questions.

I thank Dr. Kelly. I appreciate the brevity of our witnesses in their opening statements. What it does is give us a little extra time for questions and answers where we can tease out some of the details and maybe go down different avenues.

Apologies, I will have to run out of the meeting soon. I thank the witnesses for their presentations. I have a couple of questions. This is such a complex area and it is so hard to model or ascertain exactly what will happen. There could be unintended consequences or something small may happen that could have huge impacts. In relation to the AMOC, there was more information out this week, there were reports in the media and more significant reporting on that. Dr. Semmler spoke about how there would be gradual change. I hope we will never reach that tipping point where we would see that catastrophic impact. In the gradual change, will Dr. Semmler tell me what he can envisage different parts of Ireland seeing from a coastal perspective? What would be the actual impact locally? Could we go there first and then I have a question for the Marine Institute and ATU?

The gradual decrease would imply still a gradual warming around Irish coasts because the cooling effect that comes from the AMOC slowdown is outweighed, in a way, by the global warming effect. We just do not get the same rates of warming around the Irish coasts that we would get in other regions of the world.

So AMOC is actually cooling. We may have climate change temperature increases that could be slowed because of the-----

That is correct. Of course, having said that the issue is that we expect stronger differences between winter and summer. That is from the atmospheric point of view but it will influence the ocean temperatures. That might impact fisheries as well. We have to keep that in mind, that it is not just slower global warming but it is also a change in seasonality - the winters and summers being more different from each other than we are used to.

From a weather perspective, what impact could we see? Obviously, people need to be at sea over different periods. What weather differences could we see?

The expected outcome is stronger winter rain with increased heavy downpours in winter, and in summer, especially if we have high global warming levels, we would envisage longer dry periods.

What will be the impact on fisheries? Will we see more storms, potentially, because of differences in temperatures?

There is a little bit more uncertainty about the storminess. Over the past 60 years, wave heights have been increasing according to the IPCC. If we look into the future, the projections really show different signals there. This is still something we need to further investigate. What is more robust is the sea level. That will be rising for sure. We still have to narrow down the uncertainty around how exactly the wave heights and wind storms will evolve.

I thank Dr. Semmler very much. Obviously if we have different temperatures from a seasonal perspective, that will impact on food availability and everything else. We have a number of fish species that are currently under a lot of pressure from fishing. What species does Dr. Kelly think will be most at risk due to those temperature changes? Some of the species are at the level of their range here in Ireland. Which commercial species does he think will potentially be most impacted by these climate changes?

My colleague from ATU will probably have an answer to this question as well. What we have seen in terms of the monitoring we are engaging with and the stock assessments we are conducting is that what we call the boreal species, species associated with the more northerly distribution such as cod, haddock and whiting - we call them gadoids - have not been faring well.

This is an empirical observation of the outcome. We are not predicting they will not do well. We are just observing they have not done well. That has been over a period of nearly a decade at this stage. There are high levels of variability in this. The Deputy is probably aware from her background that detecting signal from noise is not always easy, but there is a quite definite signal at this stage that gadoids are not doing well, not only around Ireland but also in the North Sea.

Can Dr. Kelly say why they are not doing well? There has obviously been a huge amount of fishing pressure on those species. Is there any way of differentiating and of saying that a certain amount is caused by fishing pressure or that an increase in temperature is causing challenges for the species? Is there any way of pulling that out of the data?

Not really. Fish stock assessment measures deaths. Whether a fish dies because it is captured through fishing or because of starvation, that is not measured directly. Starvation would be accounted for in natural mortality. You may see signals of natural mortality but natural mortality is not measured directly. Without getting too technical about it, it is very difficult to disentangle these effects, but you can hypothesise from an ecological point of view about what is going on. Fish require temperature signals to spawn. We have observed some of this. This is not published material but it is what the Marine Institute has observed. We see cod in certain years, for example, being under pressure to spawn and we find cod egg-bound. That means the female retains the eggs and they are not spawning. That is a signal of a pressure. These things act in concert. They are cumulative pressures acting together. The climate stresses the fish are under, along with fishing pressure, are cumulative pressures on them.

Has Dr. Kelly seen an increase in the number of fish that are egg-bound? That would indicate the fish is not prepared to release the eggs because it does not believe there is prey there. Do we know why?

We do not know the reasons. It is an empirical observation. If you go back to the 1980s and 1990s, the prevalence of egg-bound females is less. However, you also have to look at the observation levels at that time.

There is one way of determining it. I do not know whether Dr. Vaughan is doing these studies. It can be hard to say whether a cod has died from natural mortality or was fished, but what if the food is not there? Is there analysis of the impact of temperature on plankton and the food these species prey on?

There has been some work done, not so much around Ireland but in other areas. For example, in the North Sea, there was a link to cod recruitment and a mismatch between the favoured prey item of the juvenile species, which is a copepod called Calanus finmarchicus. Because of warming temperatures, that plankton was appearing earlier, so it was not there when the younger fish needed it. That was linked to a slowdown in recruitment in cod. There is evidence the timing of plankton species and the synchrony between them is changing. That has a knock-on effect on spawning and recruitment.

If we know the current fishing pressure on a particular species, is there any modelling on top of that indicating the decline we would expect if there were a decrease in food for the species?

There has been a move to trying to develop an ecosystem approach to fisheries management. The Marine Institute is working on developing food web models. Rather than taking a single-species approach, it looks at the food web in total and at how important primary producers and secondary producers, such as plankton, are in the food web. From that, we can develop simulations of what could potentially happen, but that research is in the preliminary stages so it is not published.

I thank the witnesses representing Met Éireann, the Marine Institute and the ATU for being with us today. Met Éireann's opening statement suggests climate phenomena such as AMOC and El Niño may cause Ireland to have stronger seasonality and more extreme weather events. Will Met Éireann's representatives comment on the implications for the safety of fishing vessels at sea?

Will this have an impact on the duration of the fishing season? Is Dr. Semmler satisfied that Met Éireann has access to appropriate models and forecasting methodologies to adequately examine long-term climate trends?

This is a little bit beyond our expertise because we do not exactly know how these small fishing vessels are working. Of course, as I have already said, we have still some uncertainty even in the future if it comes to significant wave height and windstorms. At this moment, we have to still say there is uncertainty in how the North Atlantic storm is evolving and, therefore, how the windstorms will increase. We have a more certain picture about the precipitation, or the rainfall, but obviously that does not affect the fishery vessels as much as the windstorms would. The answer is that at this stage we still need further research.

Could Dr. Vaughan provide some of the key conclusions from the CLIMFISH project? Her statement, which was circulated, notes that the ocean warming can have a range of impacts on fish species and prey species. Is this something we are already seeing evidence of in Irish waters and does she know which species are impacted?

I will take that in a two-pronged approach. Our PhD student recently published a paper looking at fish size in the Celtic Sea area. He looked specifically at four species; haddock, plaice, megrim and whiting. He found that, in general, there was a decrease in the sizes of fish in the area. I caveat that by saying it is also an effect of overfishing. However, he did find some statistical evidence that temperature was having a negative effect on the body sizes of fish which could have a knock-on effect for fishing.

In the work I was doing looking at the spatial distribution of, say, lusitanian versus boreal species, we really only saw evidence of lusitanian species, which would be the warmer water species, for example, anchovy, and more pelagic species increasing in ICES area 7g, which is the Celtic Sea south of Ireland. We did not see evidence in other areas and we did not see evidence of decreasing boreal species. We attribute that to changes in fishing practices and management schemes and due to that buffering effect from the AMOC and the cooler temperatures that we see in Irish waters.

Dr. Kelly of the Marine Institute's opening statement states that climate pressures may impact the commercial viability of certain fish stock in Ireland's exclusive economic zone. Will he expand on this point and its implication for the management of fish stocks? Is this likely to influence the ICES advice on total allowable catches on species of commercial significance to Ireland in the medium term? Will he outline for the committee about his brief and the important role the Marine Institute plays in feeding into ICES prior to tackling quota in Council meetings?

There are impacts we can see. The impacts are cumulative over time, as well. The reference I made to earlier about gadoids - cod, haddock and whiting - was that what we can see from the last decade is that, in general, the recruitment pattern on those has not been as strong as it would have been in the previous decade. That is now an accumulating body of evidence to show lower productivity on those stocks. The issue for ICES is, essentially, that if the rate of change of productivity is not even - in other words, if there is a switch point and it becomes much more rapid than it has been in the past - that can put the assessments out of kilter a little bit.

We try to take account of this by measuring a broad range of biological indicators. It is not just the numbers of fish at age; it is the length and the weight of the fish at age and looking at the condition of those fish.

The Marine Institute is implicitly involved in all of these assessments. We collect data from the Irish zone from Irish fishing vessels, but we collaborate with our colleagues in Europe and, of course, the UK. All of those assessments are done in ICES for all of the fish stocks of commercial interest to Ireland. In fact, Ireland plays a leading role in the ICES process. We have somebody on secondment, namely esteemed scientist who is the chair of the advisory committee over there. We chair some of the working groups. We also chair some of the processes relating to the generation of the advice. The Marine Institute is, therefore, absolutely involved in all these processes and in trying to drive forward the accuracy and reliability of the assessments, and, I have to say, they are challenged.

The Deputy saw the zero-catch advice relating to cod, haddock and whiting in the previous round. Our warning to the Department and the industry is that where fish stocks fell below where they were on the line in the past, we got some kind of an indication that if we just reduced fishing pressure, we could bring them back. Not in all cases now, but in some cases, these cumulative effects might mean that it might take a considerably longer period to increase the productivity of fish stocks if at all.

I have one final question. Since Brexit, has the relationship between the Marine Institute and the authorities in the UK changed or is there still a very close working relationship, bearing in mind that fish know no boundaries?

That is a good question. Thankfully, ICES is an intergovernmental organisation. It includes not only EU countries but also the UK, which is a now a non-EU country, and Norway, Iceland and the Faroe Islands. In fact, even the US, Canada are members - Russia was previously - so at least the scientific work is carried out in collaboration, as it had been before Brexit. The only point where we would have maybe slightly less contact with our US colleagues would be through EU committees like the Scientific, Technical and Economic Committee for Fisheries, STECF. Its loss is noted there, but it is somewhat made up by the statistical science committees that operate through the EU-UK arrangements that are put in place for regional fisheries management.

Go raibh maith agat.

I thank everybody for their presentations. Their opening statement states that certain warm water species are extending their range into Ireland's EEZ. Can Dr. Vaughan expand on that? Does it create an opportunity for Ireland to seek quotes in these species under the Common Fisheries Policy?

There are opportunities. However, I would advise caution. For example, for the likes of anchovy, we have seen some increases in anchovy in Irish waters, but some years we might see a lot and other years we might see less. I would advise more of a wait-and-see approach to see what happens, particularly with anchovy. We might get incidental encroaches into Irish water but until we see wide-scale spawning of anchovy, I would not advise going into the quota approach until we actually have evidence that they have permanently or more permanently expanded into our Irish waters.

Met Éireann suggests that Ireland may experience more extreme weather events in the future. How soon are we likely to experience them? What type of weather events will we see and what type of weather events are fishermen likely to experience? I am going to look at this from a Donegal perspective, because we have the sweeping edge of the wind always coming at us whenever there is a storm. Has the power of storms increased over the past 40 years? Could Dr. Semmler answer that, please?

As I already reported, there is evidence that storminess has increased, especially in the context of wave heights. There have been records broken, especially in the past few years. From that perspective, I can really say that there is an issue.

We also have a project for future weather research whereby we simulate conditions when we have warmer sea surface temperatures. Some indications do tell us that storms can potentially get stronger. That said, as I explained before, there is uncertainty in this regard. These are only a few first test cases that we have been doing. There is still uncertainty in the projections. However, what I can say is that records have been broken very recently.

How long has Met Éireann been doing projections?

We started the projections in the community climate change consultation for Ireland in 2004, just over 20 years ago.

That is fine. I will move on.

The Marine Institute indicated that certain warm-water species are expanding or extending into Ireland's EEZ. What type of species are involved and is there a way for us to seek quotas for them under the Common Fisheries Policy?

I will probably limit my comments to the point of view of observations on which species are increasing. The pathway towards getting a fishing right or quota in that regard should probably be addressed to the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine. The Marine Institute carries out surveys every year. The surveys we do are not just specific to one species. For example, if we do a trawl survey, we catch whatever comes up in the net. When we do an acoustic survey, we see whatever is in the water column because we sample that as well with the net. We have observed increased distribution and frequency of observation, meaning increased biomass of species like sardines or pilchards, as some people call them. Sardines have been in Irish waters I would say forever. They were there in the 1960s and 1950s. If you talked to anybody in the fishing ports, they would say there were sardines around, but they come and go.

We are in a period where more species like that are around. Even on the demersal surveys, while I do not know if we have caught octopus yet there is certainly an outburst of octopus in the channel area. I think some of those have turned up even in the south east coast of the country. There are other species that are moving around. Anchovy was mentioned by my colleague from the ATU. I was involved in surveys in the 1990s when we caught anchovy off Dingle, but there seems to be more now than was the case previously. The persistence of those populations would be the basis on which a commercial fishery could be established. Although large volumes of anchovy or sardines are present in any given year, it is difficult for a fishery to switch to those unless there is consistency. Then there are the markets. As far as I am aware, Irish vessels have been partaking in different species fisheries, and there is probably going to be more opportunity for that in the future.

The trawl surveys would indicate that anchovy and sardines are on the increase in large volumes, and maybe enough to make them viable to fish.

I am going to stop short of saying that they would be commercially viable to fish. What I will say is that it is the acoustic surveys we are getting these on, not the trawl surveys. We see them in greater abundance than has been the case in the past. The pathway towards managing that as a commercially exploitable fishery would be to build up a stock assessment in the first instance and then establish whether the sardines in, for example , the Celtic Sea are part of a larger stock that extends into Biscay or whether they are separate stock. Then you would need to carry out a stock assessment. You would also need to produce a sustainable catch harvest advice. From that would come a share based on some process that the Department would get involved in. There is a fairly long pathway involved. There is one example with boarfish previously. Boarfish fisheries started in Ireland well over a decade ago. When we started with those, there was an exploratory fishery in the first instance. However, management caught up pretty quickly. Within about four years, a total allowable catch arrangement was set. Now, of course, the assessment for boarfish is done by Ireland in the context of ICES. That is an example of one future fishery that could evolve.

That is great. Dr. Vaughan highlighted the ecosystem approach to fisheries management. In what ways are we not taking this approach already? How could it impact the total allowable catch?

At present, stock assessments do not take into account any kind of environmental variables. They are a stock recruitment kind of process.

There has been some evidence that we could implement environmental variables. There was a project with the Marine Institute called MK Irish which came up with the idea of using a sliding scale in respect of fish mortality that could be used in stock assessment. If, for example, there was a year where the temperature was considered poor, one could adjust the fish mortality down. If there was a good year, it could be adjusted upward. That was put forward as a potential way of getting into an ecosystem-based approach to fisheries management. It is quite difficult because ecosystems are very complicated. Then there is the need to try to implement that into a stock assessment. That was a preliminary approach that was advised. We are still working on it. I will not say that there is a definitive way to do that, but it is something that is being worked on. Research is being done in the area. That was one project put forward as a stepping stone into an ecosystem-based approach to fisheries management.

I thank Dr. Vaughan.

I have a number of questions I would like to get witnesses' input on. One of the things I was struck by on foot of Dr. Semmler's presentation is how the phenomena he is researching and studying may have different impacts on different parts of our coastline and coastal waters. Dr. Semmler mentioned that the impacts on the east and the south east will be more pronounced and may be different. In what way and why? What would be the implications for sea fisheries, coastal erosion and other coastal phenomena and offshore wind energy generation off the south-east coast, which, as Dr. Semmler will be aware, is under consideration at the moment?

Basically, I was referring to the east and south especially in the context of summer maximum temperatures. The east and south east are already the warmest and driest areas at present and there is a prospect that they will get even warmer and drier in the future. There is very little evidence about wind speed. It is projected that there may be a slight decline in the mean wind speed when it comes to offshore energy. As to the reasons, it is because we would get more of the type of conditions that exist on mainland Europe. That would be much more. There is only a slight prospect that the east and south east would be different in this regard compared with the rest of Ireland.

I thank Dr. Semmler for that. I understand that it is temperature rather than wind. With regard to the temperature aspect, would it be accurate or fair to assume that the further south one goes, in terms of the waters off the south coast and the east coast, the more pronounced the impact would be? Would that have any implications for species in the area? Maybe the first part of that question is for Met Éireann. The second part is probably for the ATU and the Marine Institute. Is the impact more pronounced the further south one progresses into the waters off the south coast?

Certainly, in terms of the land impact, we know that the further south we go, the stronger it gets and the further east we go within Europe, the warming tendency is stronger. That would of course also have implications on the water temperatures between the UK and Ireland and also south of Ireland. For the impact-related aspects, I will hand over to my colleagues.

With regard to what we observe, we would understand the Celtic Sea to be essentially a constrained system unlike the west coast where it is open to the dynamics of the north Atlantic. As one moves further east in the Celtic Sea, there are current conditions that set up things like fronts. There is a Celtic Sea front that is established between it and the Irish Sea. Once those fronts are established and become permanent, the input of heat into the Celtic Sea area can have different effects. It depends on how the heat is dissipated. We have observed, for example, heatwave events in the Celtic Sea.

These heatwave events are typical of what we were talking about earlier and would be stressors for fish under certain conditions. Under extreme conditions, the warmer the water, the less oxygen is held. There is a low-oxygen condition under extreme heatwave conditions, but that is particularly pronounced as we move into shallower waters. It all depends on the combination of the atmospheric conditions in terms of wind and wind events, the input of solar radiation in terms of heat and the movement of that heat mass around in the sea. It can impact on fish species that are resident in those areas. For example, fish species that are associated with the sea bed and that do not move around a lot would be more vulnerable in those situations to those kinds of events than those species that are able to move and find more optimal conditions elsewhere.

The paper I published recently mainly looked at community-related trends and did not attribute those trends to temperature. However, what we did find was that the only area that showed a statistically significant increasing trend in Lusitanian species was in the Celtic Seas, in ICES area 7g, which is in that southern region.

Regarding the recruitment of species and the impact that were mentioned in response to previous questions, to what extent are changing temperatures having an impact? Obviously, when we speak about fisheries issues, we are concerned with fish species for catching and that are of importance to sea fisheries, but they predate on smaller organisms. Is there an impact on those smaller organisms that is then having a knock-on impact on fish stocks?

I will take the recruitment question first. There has not been a lot of research in Irish waters with regard to juvenile fish larval stages. It is a gap in the research. There has been a lot of work done on temperature influences on larval species in coral reef systems and we have seen negative impacts in those areas, which would have a knock-on effect on the number of fish that are being recruited into a fishing stock. I am sorry, but what was the second question?

The second question related to the organisms that the fish species are predating on. Has there been an impact on those, with a knock-on impact on the target species for commercial sea fisheries?

I am not aware of direct relationships in the research, but there is a lot of research being done at the moment on developing food web models where we will see that. There has been a food web model developed for the Irish Sea, which was done as part of the MK Irish project that I mentioned earlier and there are two projects at the moment working on developing food web models for the Celtic Seas region, where we could potentially be getting in to answering those types of questions.

I thank Dr. Vaughan.

The only thing I can really add is that the relationship between temperature and fish is not a direct one, except under the extreme circumstances to which I referred earlier. In extremely high temperatures, physiologically, the fish will become stressed because of low oxygen conditions. Long before that, however, there are second- and third-order interactions between increases in temperature in the water and stresses on the fish. One of those relates to the timing of the warming. Generally, in an annual cycle, the seas will warm up in spring and early summer. That early or spring warming of the seas produces biological activity at the bottom of the food chain in terms of phytoplankton and zooplankton. If the timing of that changes and the seas warm up earlier, it will produce an environmental physical reaction. Those food chains will kick off with the temperature cue but the fish have been evolved over time to spawn at specific times of the year, so that is going to be a mismatch. If that cue happens too early, in terms of warming, we might get a peak in food productivity in one part of the food chain that is not available to the larvae of the fish that are spawned at another specific time of the year. That is a second-order impact that we can have from temperature.

Temperature can also affect current patterns around the coast. Depending on the distribution of the water masses, that actually affects the distribution of larvae. Larvae are generally designed to be contained within an area where there is good food availability for them and not too many predators, but if we get changes in coastal currents or offshore currents, that can have a larger impact on some of the fish stocks.

I thank Dr. Kelly. My final question is for Met Éireann. It relates to the AMOC and the worst-case scenario.

What are the implications for Irish sea fisheries in a worst case scenario, if that were to manifest?

The worst case scenario would be that we have a really strong decline of the AMOC until the end of the century. That could even result in some local cooling around Ireland because the AMOC acts like a conveyor belt, transporting heat from the Gulf of Mexico towards Ireland. Of course, if that is slowing down very strongly, as in the worst case scenario, then we could have cooling of the atmosphere, especially in winter. That will then, of course, affect the ocean conditions as well. In a very strong scenario, it could even happen that there was slight cooling rather than warming in summer. That would be the worst case scenario.

In terms of Newfoundland, a number of the witnesses will know that there was a crisis with cod a number of years ago. It was apparently going to have devastating consequences for those communities. However, in conversations I have had in recent years, it seems that the changes in climate have provided new fishing opportunities and balanced out the loss of cod. In fairness, what the witnesses are telling us is much more serious than the impact on fish species. It presents huge challenges for Ireland as a whole and how we adapt. One of the things that I find incredibly frustrating is how long it takes to get flood defences built in this country. The Minister visited my constituency recently and officials told families who had been out of their homes on a flood plain for eight years that the timeframe was good because it normally took 11 to 15 years to build flood defences. We are unready as a country for all of the challenges we are facing.

The presentation today is much more serious than just the impacts that are relevant to this committee in terms of fisheries and maritime affairs. It is extremely sobering and I do not get any sense that we have a real understanding of that in Ireland or Europe more widely. The Common Fisheries Policy, CFP, does not in any way reflect the changes that are coming. The CFP rewards the industrialisation of fishing and rewards overfishing, clearly. It also rewards third countries involved in overfishing. Recently, there was a choice between a 70% cut or a 48% cut to particular stocks based on science, but because the third countries that had recklessly overfished would not go with the 70% cut, the rest of Europe, that is, the European Union, had to go along with that rather than confront the reckless overfishing.

What interactions are the witnesses having at a European level? Is there awareness of this challenge? Is the European Commission's DG MARE prepared for this? Is there anything in its policies that suggests it is changing tack? Is any assistance being given to fish producers and fishers around the coasts to adapt to the species changes? The witnesses talked about anchovies, sardines and octopus, which are warm water fish, being abundant in our waters in a way that we had never seen before. Of course, the cold water fish are in decline. We operate under the CFP outside of our six-mile limit, so the bulk of our territorial waters are under the jurisdiction of the European Union.

I see no evidence at all that it has a policy that reflects what the witnesses have presented to us today. I want to get a sense of Met Éireann's engagements at European level. Is this being taken seriously? I know that these are loaded questions, but in my opinion, it is not being taken seriously. I will be very clear about that. I see no evidence. I see rewarding of reckless behaviour and of industrialisation of fishing. I am not asking the witnesses to endorse my opinion, only to give me their objective view. At European level, is this being taken seriously and, if not, what can we do about it?

I will respond from the physical point of view. What we in Met Éireann, in collaboration with national and international collaborators, including those from the European Union, are doing is providing the scientific insights to the community. We also publish our results on the Met Éireann webpage and we have various policy briefs available about the situation, the climate science, and how the atmosphere and ocean have already been changing and how we expect them to change. We are very open to distributing all of this information, including to the media here in Ireland.

It is very important that we have national and international collaborators. One of the projects on which we will be embarking is also funded by the European Union, which sees, of course, the need for further research in this area, for example, of the AMOC.

My problem is that we hear concerned language about the impact of climate change coming from the European Union but the Common Fisheries Policy does not reflect that. It is in direct contradiction of the scientific evidence that is there in abundance. I particularly think of the pelagic sector, where I see huge factory trawlers off the coast of Ireland that are rewarded, encouraged and incentivised to do that. I see a policy that allows major corporations to buy up quota across Europe and to basically hoover fish out of our sea with no relationship to the science. The witnesses are all eminent people and I do not dispute any information they have given to this committee today, but I do not see any response at policy level from the European Union, in terms of fisheries, that reflects this threat. I just do not see it. I want to get a sense of the situation, perhaps from the Marine Institute or from ATU. I appreciate that the witnesses do not want to engage in criticism, but I am just telling them what I see. There is a schizophrenic approach from the European Union, which talks about the dangers of climate change and asks farmers and other sectors to adapt to that. I do not have any issue with any of that, but when I look at fisheries, I cannot get my head around the approach of the European Union. My issue is that there is no relationship to the science and the climate threat that is there.

I might just leave it at that. It is unfair of me to put those questions to the witnesses but I will make that observation.

Most of things that I wanted to talk about have been brought up. I welcome the witnesses. I have concerns about the way we discuss issues like climate change and warming when it comes to industry practices like fishing. I was watching "Prime Time" a number of weeks ago and it was covering basking sharks and the concerns that they may migrate to other waters. I found the tone very disappointing. It placed a lot of blame solely on fishers. On the programme, Dr. Nick Payne referred to dangerous fishing practices in Irish waters and spoke about Ireland's record on fish protection ranking one out of ten. I think that is exactly what he said. Have the witnesses any comment on that or would they agree with him?

I thank the Senator. Basking sharks are not subject to a commercial fishery and have not been since the "Man of Aran" movie in the 1930s.

Any threat that would be there to basking shark would be from incidental by-catch. There are incidental by-catch monitoring programmes undertaken by the Marine Institute as part of a data collection framework programme that is the same throughout all of Europe. There are interactions there for sure, including whether there is a specific threat. Any loss of a basking shark, which is a protected and threatened species, is a bad loss for the basking shark population, so there would obviously be management measures to try to minimise that. I do not know whether I subscribe to the issue that fishing is the greatest threat to basking shark. That may be the case but I will defer to my colleague, Mr. Johnston, who is an expert on pelagic banks. He may be able to add to this further.

There is probably some incidental by-catch in fisheries but it is unlikely that it is the main cause of mortality within the basking shark population. As Dr. Kelly pointed out, they have been protected for a considerable amount of time now. They were added to the prohibited species list in 2010, I believe, so it is completely forbidden to catch them. They were also added to national legislation in 2022 under Wildlife Act regulations as specifically requiring protection. From what we can see, the population is recovering, not just in Irish waters but in the north-east Atlantic. They are assessed on a regular basis by the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea and while they are still recommended to be protected, the stock does appear to be increasing right now.

That is good to hear. Listening to that programme you would not think that was the case. Deputy Gallagher may have touched on the topic of my last question; I only heard part of it up in the office. What climate resilience measures could be implemented to ensure the protection of fishing stocks and survival of fishing communities? What do the witnesses think is needed? How do we address this?

Deputy Mac Lochlainn referred to the Common Fisheries Policy and that there is no aspect of climate impacts on that. However, the Common Fisheries Policy set sustainable harvests on the basis of what is called "best available science". Best available science is what comes through from ICES. It is a continuous and developing process. We have long been aware that there are regime shifts in certain sea-basin areas. The Baltic is a good example. The Baltic has gone through extreme changes in productivity due to climate changes but also due to what we call anthropogenic inputs, such as pollution and things like that, and they are taken into account. There are special scientific working groups within ICES that deal with this. Similarly, for fish stocks where fish stocks are becoming less resilient due to pressures induced by climate change, they are factored in but not specifically modelled.

This is an ongoing discussion. That is why we work with the universities and our colleagues in Met Éireann to try to improve this process. The interaction between climate, temperature and fish stocks in terms of productivity, and ultimately fisheries that are trying to sustainably harvest that productivity, is very complex. You are not just dealing with a physical interaction that is the temperature on the ocean, which a physical thing. It is a first-order interaction in terms of the bottom of the food chain and the food for larval fish growing, then second-order impacts to do with competition and new species coming into an area and finally the availability of those fish to the fishery at that time. There is an attempt, at least, to factor in some of the empirical observations that we see as the outcomes from those stressors on the fish populations.

However, what we are usually talking about, by and large, is that for species that are already at the southern limit of their extent - I referred to cod, haddock and whiting earlier on - and already at the limit of their range, increases in temperature are only going to provide increases to biological stress in those populations. That increase in biological stress is only going to make them less resilient and the only management outcome for a less resilient stock is to lower the harvest-rate level in that stock in the longer term, which would mean lower yields over the longer term. The impact for how you could manage that has to be a diversification of species used to support sustainable fisheries. Fishermen do not just fish for fish; obviously they have to fish for money. If the yield of one stock goes down, you need to maintain some kind of an income at that point.

Diversification is a difficult thing to do because there is always competition for different fisheries resources, but Ireland will have to act tactically here and look at where the opportunities are. The fishing industry is aware of this too and it has an eye out for future opportunities that may arise with things like squid, for example, and-or cuttlefish, that may be in increasing abundance. The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine can work in tandem with institutes like the Marine Institute to make sure a sustainable harvest rate regime is set up for those. A good example of that is boarfish.

We have an opportunity for a second round of questions if any member would like to come back in.

I thank Dr. Kelly. I referenced the experience in Newfoundland. I had an impression from watching the documentary "Atlantic" about the challenges faced by fishing communities in Ireland, Norway and Newfoundland. I caught up with people who work in the marine environment in Canada, in Newfoundland, a few years ago who told me - it was really interesting - that prosperity had been returned by diversification. Will Dr. Kelly take us through the Marine Institute's partnership with the fishing organisations in Ireland, where that conversation goes and how the State can assist the process of diversification with vessels? Will he give us a sense of what it looks like?

A number of agencies are involved. When it comes to the business of fishing, the key agency people probably will want to speak to is Bord Iascaigh Mhara because it works closely with the fishing industry on converting what is caught into the revenue stream that is the business of fishing. However, from the Marine Institute perspective, we are constantly doing surveys and monitoring what is being caught in the commercial fisheries, so we at least have an evidence basis for what the availability or abundance of potential new species would be. The Marine Institute has a long record of doing this, again working in partnership with BIM.

Back in the 1990s we worked together on exploratory fishing programmes. At that point, it was looking for deepwater species. Deepwater fisheries are now banned because, through that early exploration, we discovered the biological productivity of those species does not support the kind of harvest rates people are used to from the shallower water, shelf species. That is an example of the institute and BIM working together with the Government and the industry to try to develop new opportunities. It is the pathway for the future as well. The Marine Institute has good eyes and ears and a good scientific regimen to be able to give consistent information. It is not the remit of the Marine Institute to look at the business of fishing. That is for BIM, but BIM does that effectively and it works closely with the industry, as we do.

I made reference in previous sessions of this committee to the Irish fisheries science research partnership. These are specifically the kinds of issues that come up for discussion. If there is a mandate for the institute to begin to look into, for example, new species from its surveys, we will start by looking back at the evidence basis we have from our survey series.

On anchovies and sardines, I have heard from fishing organisations. Maybe no one here can answer this question. If those fish are coming into our waters, it strikes me as an opportunity. It has been said to me by fishing organisations, but today a scientific logic was put on why it is happening and it will continue to happen. It strikes me that there is an opportunity, maybe even for the inshore fishing communities. I think around the south coast it is particularly predominant. Anyway, it would probably be BIM that should deal with that, so I will leave it at that.

Does any other member wish to put questions? No. In that case, I have two further questions. One is for the Marine Institute and relates to cetaceans and marine mammals. To what extent are marine mammals affected by temperature changes? Is there any data on that?

Has the Marine Institute considered it or is it considering it?

I defer to my colleague, Mr. Johnston.

It is not something we are looking at directly. We have a programme where we place qualified marine mammal observers on our survey vessels during survey time so we keep records of what they see. We are involved with various programmes where we are testing some equipment for programmes run by ATU and the Irish Whale and Dolphin Group as well. We are collecting data on this but we are not analysing it ourselves directly.

My final question is for Met Éireann and it relates to the risk of further storms in the north Atlantic, the risk of flooding, storm damage and curtailment of fishing opportunity and all the other increased risks that come with an increase in storms. The models Met Éireann looks at are predicting increases in temperatures globally and a potential cooling in the north Atlantic as ice caps melt. That will lead to more wind storms on the north Atlantic that will have an impact on the west coast in particular, but the whole island and north-western Europe.

As I said, for the future, the storminess is a pressing issue, but we still have uncertainty because we still have to narrow down how the AMOC will evolve in the future. We are working extensively, Europe-wide, on reducing uncertainty and narrowing down exactly the direction in which the AMOC slowdown is going. The most likely outcome is that it will gradually decline and still leave some warming around Ireland, as I said previously.

Regarding flooding, the sea level is going to rise. It is already accelerating at an increasing rate as we speak and if there is a storm surge and waves on top of that, that gives compound extreme events. It can also be combined with extreme rainfall at the same time. That will lead to further bad impacts at river mouths. In terms of flooding, there is an impact, in that the sea level will rise. It will actually happen more in the south west than the north east because of land sinking in the south west. There is a little more certainty in those projections.

This is an issue that must concern us all. It greatly concerns this committee and I believe we will come back to it to discuss it further. There are huge implications for all maritime activity and for our coastal communities. This committee was established to give voice to those communities and that sector, so we will certainly revisit and continue to monitor it.

Perhaps, as there are no further questions and because I curtailed the opening statements, I will give a minute or two to each group of witnesses to conclude. If they have any recommendations or if there are any items for further scrutiny the committee could do, they might talk about them. I will go in the order we began, starting with Dr. Semmler.

Once a year we hold the Irish AMOC workshop and there is an invitation to policymakers and journalists. It usually takes place at the beginning of the year, in the first half of January. That is what I would like to add.

I thank Dr. Semmler and the team from Met Éireann.

I just want to highlight that fish are a key component of marine ecosystems and one of the difficulties is that this area is very complex. It is difficult to predict how fish will react to climate change, but, as part of the scientific community, we are trying to drill down into that and continued research in this area is particularly important.

It is very important to research the juvenile stages in particular as they are very sensitive to climatic influences.

I thank Dr. Vaughan very much for that. I turn finally to Dr. Kelly.

I have just a few messages to the committee. One of the points the Marine Institute would try to make is to not try to oversimplify this. There seems to be a narrative that rolls out in the public media, for example, that the world is getting hotter and fish are moving north, but it is not that simple. We have gone into a bit of the detail on that. There are multiple complex interactions going on here. What the committee has heard from the witnesses is the State is working quite effectively on this. Met Éireann is managing the observations on the physical environment, our colleagues in universities are working on academic endeavours to try to work out the relationship between what is going on between the physical and biological environments and the Marine Institute, as the State marine science agency, is measuring the empirical impacts of these things. I would not be over-optimistic about progress. We are not going to be able to predict the impact of climate change on fish. However, we can certainly use the best available science to give the committee a direction of travel on this and members have heard some of the information about the direction of travel. The important part is managing the impacts of that for Ireland in terms of its coastal communities and especially its fishing industry, where they are exposed to those impacts.

Thank you very much for that. On behalf of the committee I thank all witnesses who are here, who corresponded with us prior to the meeting, for their preparation for it and for answering our questions. It is always interesting when we have a delegation of scientists answering non-scientists on scientific questions but I thank the witnesses very much for communicating it to us clearly and bearing with us as we put our questions in our inexpert ways. We will return to this issue and keep it under close watch. Thank you again for your participation.