Squid, octopuses and cuttlefish are important species in fisheries worldwide. This short-lived group is sensitive to changes in environmental conditions, so climate change may negatively influence their sustainable exploitation.
In this study, researchers aggregated species occurrences of Octopus vulgaris (common octopus), Sepia officinalis (common cuttlefish) and Loligo vulgaris (common squid) from OBIS, GBIF and SeaLifeBase to model their ecological niches in European waters.
The authors considered various environmental parameters such as salinity and temperature, applied in an ensemble modelling framework. The approach combined several different algorithms that integrated machine learning and regression-based methods, to produce predictions about the current and future environmental suitability and distribution for each species.
Overall, the models predicted increases in environmental suitability in all areas north of the English Channel, shifting the centres of the species' distributions north-eastward. The highest increases were observed in the North Sea for cuttlefish and squid and in the Baltic Sea for octopus. General decreases, however, were observed for all three species in the Bay of Biscay and across the Mediterranean.