BarEcoRe

The BarEcoRe project investigated how the Barents Sea ecosystem has responded to changes in ocean climate and human pressure in the past and what can make it more resilient to this kind of perturbations in the future. The strong data support for BarEcoRe was provided by the Barents Sea Ecosystem Survey.
In the central Barents Sea, fish and benthos communities have responded similarly to environmental gradients driven by the polar front, which separate Atlantic from Arctic waters. The northeastward displacement of the polar front has led to concomitant shifts in the distributions of biological communities. These affect distribution of biological diversity of fish species with opposite effects on low fecundity and high fecundity communities. Benthic species that are more sensitive to trawling disturbances are rare or absent in heavily trawled areas, which leads to ben thic communities with reduced biodiversity