Signature of climate-induced changes in seafood species served in restaurants

Climate change is causing shifts in biogeography of marine species, towards higher latitude, deeper waters, or following local temperature gradients. Such species distribution changes are affecting global fisheries through increasing the dominance of warmer-water preferred species as ocean temperature increases. Previous modeling analyses projected that climate-induced changes in seafood availability would affect the entire seafood chain. However, observed climate impacts on seafood retailers and consumers have rarely been demonstrated. Seafood restaurants usually rely on the supply of locally caught species, and thus the impacts of changing catches on the food they serve, and consequently on their diners, may be reflected in their menus. In this study, 362 restaurant menus from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, were collated and analyzed over four different time periods (1880–1960, 1961–1980, 1981–1996, and 2019–2021). Moreover, 148 present-day menus from two other cities north (Anc...