Skippers’ preferred adaptation and transformation responses to catch declines in a large-scale tuna fishery

At first glance, large-scale fisheries may seem adaptable to climate change. Adaptation takes place from the governance to the individual level of fishers. At the individual level, skippers make day-to-day decisions on where to fish and are at the forefront of the response to changes at sea. We seek to understand such individual adaptation in large-scale fisheries, using the case of the Spanish tropical tuna fishery. We surveyed 22% of Spanish freezer purse seine skippers operating in the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific Oceans. In the last 10 years, more than half of skippers used new technology to search for tunas and expanded their fishing area as adaptation actions. Using cluster analysis, we identified two skipper groups—based on stated behaviours to confront different hypothetical scenarios of catch decline—that would follow adaptation or transformation strategies. The majority of skippers would follow adaptation strategies until a hypothetical 30% catch decrease and then choices diverge. Skipper characteristics, such as importance given to intergenerational knowledge, perceptions of change in tropical tuna abundance, and years working in the current job, can explain the adaptation and transformation choices. These findings help understand the potential for adaptation behaviour by skippers involved in fisheries confronting catch declines.