2026's "Strongest on Record" El Niño Could Have "Devastating" Impact on Global Fisheries!

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An El Niño that could reach historically extreme intensity is closing in on global fisheries.

An analysis released in August by the Climate Prediction Center of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) National Weather Service shows that this El Niño is rapidly strengthening, with sea surface temperatures in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific continuing to rise, and is expected to peak around November to December. At the time, forecasts put the probability of the event developing into a super-strong El Niño at 81%, and it could exceed the intensity of the historically strong El Niños of 1982–1983, 1997–1998 and 2015–2016.

On September 3, the World Meteorological Organization confirmed that El Niño had formed, and projected that it would peak around the end of 2026, with a probability of close to 100% that it will persist until February 2027. This means that in the coming months the world's oceans will experience a strong environmental disturbance, and for the commercial fishing industry, what deserves the most attention is not the climate indicators themselves, but a more direct question: will the fish still be where they used to be?

The fish haven't disappeared, but traditional fishing grounds may fail first

What El Niño changes first is the marine environment. As seawater temperatures rise, plankton, forage organisms and commercial fish species all respond; some species may die or have their reproduction affected, some migrate to higher latitudes, others move into deeper water layers, and the risk of some marine organisms being affected by disease and pathogens may also increase.

The impact of these changes on commercial fishing is far more complex than the surface-level impression of "fewer fish." Commercial fleets typically arrange their year-round operations around specific species, traditional fishing grounds and fixed fishing seasons. If fish stocks change location, areas that were once familiar may suddenly lose their former catching efficiency, and fleets can only wait, switch target species, or spend more time and fuel searching for new fish stocks.

Malin Pinsky, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, noted in an interview that marine species may shift their distribution ranges at rates 5 to 10 times faster than land species. For commercial fisheries, this means that the experience-based "when to go where to catch what" may quickly become obsolete, while fleets must adjust under the constraint of limited fishing seasons.

This is also the most alarming aspect of this El Niño: when fish stocks change location, what gets disrupted first is not the market, but the operating plans of fishing vessels.

The lessons of 2015–2016 are not distant

The strong El Niño of 2015–2016 already proved that such changes in the marine environment can directly disrupt a normally functioning fishing season.

At the time, the California Dungeness crab fishery was affected by a harmful algal bloom, and regulators had to delay the season. Normally, the California Dungeness crab season lasts about 7 months, but in 2015–2016 it was ultimately compressed to about 2 months; that year, 71% of California Dungeness crab vessels stopped operating, and more than 200 jobs disappeared.

The problem was not just several months of lost crab catches. Fixed costs such as vessel insurance, maintenance, loans and crew do not disappear because a season is delayed, and once the core season is shortened, the year-round operating plans that had been arranged are also disrupted. At the time, some fishermen chose to wait, some switched to other fish, and some better-capitalized fleets were able to sail further north to find new crab resources.

Behind this is actually a very realistic calculation: if fish stocks leave traditional fishing grounds, fleets must spend more time, fuel and money to chase them.

For large fleets, longer voyages may mean higher costs; for smaller fleets with limited capital, they may mean no ability to continue operating at all. When shorter seasons, lower catching efficiency and rising operating costs occur at the same time, what is affected is no longer a single voyage, but the profitability model of the entire fishery.

And the situation in 2026 is even more complex. This El Niño, which could reach historically extreme intensity, happens to occur against the backdrop of frequent large-scale marine heatwaves in recent years. If the two overlap, the cost fleets must pay to find fish stocks could rise further.

California squid were once "driven away"

Squid is another very typical case.

California market squid (Doryteuthis opalescens) was once an important commercial catch species in California, but during a previous El Niño, this fishery suffered a severe blow. Subsequently, the squid population moved north, with some resources entering more northern waters such as Oregon, and the local California squid fishery has never fully recovered since.

There is a very important distinction here: a shift in fish stocks does not equal the disappearance of fish stocks.

For the original producing areas, the departure of fish stocks means vessels cannot catch the previous volumes, and ports and processing companies are also affected; but for the new areas to which the fish stocks migrate, new fishing opportunities may emerge. Therefore, El Niño will not simply cause "global squid production to decline together," but is more likely to redistribute resources among different sea areas.

Existing research analyzing data from 1948 to 2018 found that different types of El Niño do not affect California squid in exactly the same way. The more typical eastern Pacific El Niño of the 20th century significantly reduced California squid catches, while after entering the 21st century, as central Pacific El Niño strengthened, this negative impact weakened, and in some cases may even have had different effects on squid reproduction.

So what is really worth watching this year is not the phrase "El Niño will reduce squid," but how fish stocks will be redistributed, and whether this change will cause existing commercial fishing grounds to lose their fishing value.

Changes in squid will ultimately reach the Chinese market

This is also why El Niño cannot be treated merely as climate news.

China is an important global market for squid imports, processing and trade. FAO data show that in 2025 China imported 551,600 tonnes of squid and cuttlefish, up 40.7% year on year, of which supplies from Peru reached 180,600 tonnes. Large quantities of imported raw materials enter China's processing system and then flow to the domestic market and international trade markets.

Therefore, if squid resources in an important supplying country change, what the Chinese market faces first is not a sudden decline in consumer demand, but a change in the supply structure of imported raw materials.

Suppose catching efficiency declines in a major producing area and raw material supply decreases; Chinese processing companies and traders still need to procure, so they will look for other producing areas. Goods originally supplied to other markets may thus receive more orders, and the supply-demand relationship in substitute producing areas will also change, so price pressure may be transmitted from one fishing ground to another.

This is also a chain effect that often appears in international seafood trade: a decline in supply from an important producing area will not automatically make downstream demand disappear; buyers will look for substitute sources, and if substitute sources cannot increase quickly, they will become a new price support.

Therefore, for an import, processing and re-export market like China, what really needs attention is where the raw materials are, not whether the fish have actually disappeared.

Peru is only one observation window

Peruvian squid deserves particular attention, but two issues need to be separated here.

On the one hand, obvious anomalies have already appeared in Peruvian waters in 2026. Previous reports showed that sea temperatures in some waters off the Peruvian coast were significantly higher than normal, some commercial fish species moved to deeper waters, and Peru's fisheries industrial activity was also affected.

On the other hand, it is not possible to simply attribute every change in Peruvian squid production to this El Niño. Squid resources themselves are affected by a combination of sea temperature, ocean currents, forage, biomass and other marine environmental factors. At present, the better-supported statement is that a strong El Niño can change the migration, reproduction and habitat environment of some squid populations, rather than that it has been proven that the decline in Peruvian squid in 2026 is entirely caused by El Niño.

This distinction is very important, because global squid producing areas do not change in sync. Supply may decline in one producing area while increasing in another due to fish migration or different ocean conditions; what the market is really hit by is whether global supply can fill the gap in time.

Tuna may also be affected

Squid is not the only species that needs attention.

Highly migratory fish such as tuna are also sensitive to changes in the marine environment. Recent research on yellowfin tuna and bigeye tuna caught by longline in the western and central Pacific found an association between El Niño and catch per unit effort (CPUE), and this impact does not necessarily appear immediately; some effects may only emerge after several months or even longer.

This means that no obvious decline in tuna catches in a given month does not prove that El Niño has had no impact. Fish stocks may simply have changed location, migration routes or the water layer they inhabit, and fleets need to change operating areas and search methods.

For distant-water fisheries, such changes go directly into the cost ledger. Fuel itself is an important operating cost of distant-water fishing, and when fleets need to sail farther and search longer for the same amount of fish, unit catching costs will naturally rise.

If such changes occur in a small fishery, the market may still have enough room to absorb them; but if multiple important fisheries are affected at the same time, the problem will gradually shift from "how many fewer fish did which vessel catch" to "how much stable supply can the global market still obtain."

What does "devastating" really mean?

Therefore, "devastating" in the headline does not mean that El Niño will make all the fish in the world's oceans disappear, nor that all countries and all species will see production declines at the same time.

What is truly dangerous is that it may cause some traditional fishing grounds to suddenly lose their former production efficiency. After fish stocks change location, fleets need to spend more time and fuel to find them; as catching costs rise, some fleets may be unable to continue operating; as supply decreases, buyers turn to other producing areas; and increased substitute demand may in turn push up prices in other producing areas.

If such changes occur in only one species, the market can still absorb them by adjusting supply sources. But if multiple important fisheries such as squid, tuna, mackerel, salmon and raw materials for fishmeal and fish oil are significantly affected at around the same time, the impact may spread from fishing grounds to ports, and then to processing companies and international trade markets.

Among them, the impact on anchovy is especially easy to underestimate. It is not the seafood product most familiar to end consumers, but it is an important raw material for fishmeal and fish oil. Once important anchovy fisheries in Central and South America are affected by abnormal marine environmental conditions, the cost of aquaculture feed downstream may also be affected.

So what is truly nerve-wracking about this El Niño is not that "there are no fish in the sea," but that the previous production model built on stable fishing grounds, fixed vessel schedules and familiar fishing routes may suddenly lose its stability.

The 2026 El Niño is still strengthening and is expected to peak around the end of the year. For global fisheries, when fish stocks begin to leave their original locations, what changes may be not just the catch of one fishing ground, but an entire cost chain from fishing at sea, port supply and raw material procurement to international trade; and for the seafood market, what is ultimately truly scarce is not the fish in the sea, but fish that can be caught at the past cost and in the past way.

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