Rapid climate change increases diversity and homogenizes composition of coastal fish at high latitudes

Rapid warming at high latitudes triggers poleward shifts of species’ distributions that impact marine biodiversity. In the open sea, the documented redistributions of fish lead to a borealization of Arctic fauna. A climate driven borealization and increased species diversity at high latitudes is also expected in coastal fish communities, but it has not been previously documented on a large, biogeographic scale. Here, we investigate the impact of temperature change over the last 25 years on fish communities along the coast of Norway. The study area, spanning different ecoclimatic zones between 62° and 71° N, harbors over 200 species of boreal and Arctic fish. Several of these fish species are harvested by coastal and indigenous communities, influencing settlements geography and livelihood. The long-term data on coastal water temperatures and fish species were obtained from monitoring stations and scientific surveys. Water temperature measured at three fixed sampling stations distributed ..., Refer to the associated paper for a description of methods., , # Rapid climate change increases diversity and homogenizes composition of coastal fish at high latitudes

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.zs7h44jhf](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.zs7h44jhf)

The dataset contains summary statistics of fish diversity and composition from demersal trawls along the Norwegian coast. Raw data comes from an annual scientific survey and was collected by the Norwegian Institute of Marine Research (IMR). The results are based on a selection of 59 fish taxa, and presented per year (1995-2019) and sub-section along the coast. The coast was divided into 10 equally long intervals of c. 167 km each. Please read the paper or contact the author for more details.

## Description of the data and file structure

| **Column** | **Explanation** |
| :----------- | :-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| year | Year of sampling ...