Comment on “Impacts of historical warming on marine fisheries production”

Abstract

Free et al. (Reports, 1 March 2019, p. 979) linked sea surface temperature (SST) to surplus production and estimated a 4% decline in maximum sustainable yield (MSY) since 1930. Changes in MSY are expected when fitting production models to age-structured data, so attributing observed changes to SST is problematic. Analyses of recruitment (a metric of productivity in the same database) showed increases in global productivity.