LOS ANGELES — As the chances of a 'super' El Niño continue to rise — now 81%, according to federal scientists — researchers are looking back to 2015 and 2016, when a Pacific heat wave combined with a strong El Niño threw some of the West Coast's most important commercial fishing fleets into turmoil.

They say we could be looking at a repeat. Or worse.

"I think we're likely to break global temperature records with this next El Niño," said Malin Pinsky, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at UC Santa Cruz. "So it's very concerning and it is likely to have very big impacts on marine fisheries."

As ocean waters warm, plants and animals respond. Some die. Some don't reproduce. Some move north. Others go to deeper water. Then there are those that get sick, or become susceptible to pathogens fueled by the increasing temperatures.

Marine species are shifting their ranges five to 10 times faster than land species in response to global warming, Pinsky said.

"So we're seeing these kinds of rapid changes in the ocean and our commercial fisheries are having to deal with these changes much sooner" than hunters or farmers on land, he said.

For commercial fishing fleets, these changes can be disastrous. They've had to deal with declines before, but have generally known when and where to find what is still there.

Fishing fleets often rely on a few key species to make ends meet, said Sunny Jardine, a resource and environmental economist at the University of Washington.

But "some of these fisheries are only open during certain times during the year, so [fishermen] participate in one when it's open," she said, and schedule accordingly. That can get "really thrown off if openings are delayed" or shut down.

During the 2015-16 season, for instance, Dungeness crabs off the coast of California were infected by a harmful algal bloom of Pseudo-nitzschia, which causes domoic acid poisoning in crabs, fish, birds and marine mammals. When people eat these contaminated shellfish or fish, they can get Amnesic Shellfish Poisoning, which can lead to vomiting, diarrhea, permanent short-term memory loss, coma or death.

As a result, in 2015-16, regulators delayed the crab season for months, ultimately squeezing the typical seven months down to roughly two. During that terrible season, 71% of California Dungeness boats stopped fishing and more than 200 jobs were lost.

It was particularly damaging for these fishermen because Dungeness crabs tend to be their most lucrative catch of the year, making the shellfish, Jardine said, a kind of "gilded trap."

During that stretch, she said, some fishermen waited it out. Others tried to fish for other species. And others, the biggest and most financially stable fleets, were able to travel farther north to look for the crabs, she said.

As this new, potentially record-breaking El Niño barrels in on the heels of a massive coastal heat wave and with gas prices high, even those large fishing fleets may have to reconsider what effort they're willing to expend on searching for fish.

Because it probably won't be just Dungeness crabs they'll have to follow.

During that earlier El Niño, for instance, market squid, which had been the largest commercial fishery by volume in California, moved north to Oregon. They've never fully rebounded.

Salmon also suffered, partly because drought had affected inland rivers, where Chinook and Coho migrate to spawn, eggs hatch, and salmon fry swim back downstream to the ocean.

But warmer oceans are also often bereft of the high-energy prey these juvenile salmon need for rapid growth when they reach the saltwater. The lack of food at this life stage reduces their odds of survival, which then lowers the chances they'll return to the rivers to repeat the cycle.

And that's just what happened. In 2017, salmon fishing was closed along parts of the California and Oregon stocks.

Nate Mantua, the program lead for the Landscape and Seascape Ecology team at the National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration's Southwest Fisheries Science Center, said the upcoming El Niño is likely to be a mixed bag for California's salmon.

If the system brings a lot of rain, which can happen during an El Niño, that big water will benefit salmon who are in their river stages. But the warm ocean water will be a blow to juvenile salmon, and that won't show up until two or three years later.

Jessica Gephart, an assistant professor at the University of Washington's School of Aquatic and Fishery Science, said a strong El Niño could also affect aquaculture.

Two-thirds of U.S. seafood is imported; much of that comes in the form of farmed fish, such as Atlantic salmon, tilapia and Vietnamese catfish. In 2016, there was a big marine heat wave off the coast of Chile, that combined with an excess of nutrients to lead to an algae bloom that, Gephart said, wiped out more than 40,000 tons of farmed salmon.

Even inland species, such as tilapia or pond-based farmed shrimp, she said, could be affected by El Niño indirectly through a breakdown in fish meal supplies.

"Fish meal is a really important ingredient for many species, and the largest source of fish meal is the Peruvian anchoveta, which of course is known to really be impacted by El Niño," she said, referring to the derivation of the name of the climate event.

South American fishermen had noticed for centuries that every few years, a warm water current pushed ashore around Christmas. So they named it after the Christ child — El Niño. The warm water, the result of change in currents and stalling of the typical cold water upwelling that occurred along the coast, was nutrient-poor and led to steep crashes in phytoplankton and anchovy populations.

"That fish meal or aqua feed, as a whole, represents the majority cost for a lot of aquaculture farmers," Gephart said. "So we should expect there to be increasing prices for for many of those farmed fish that we import."

Already, the warming ocean waters are changing the mix of fish. Off the Southern California coast, fishermen are catching dorado and yellowfin much earlier than usual.

Unfortunately, experts say, the federal process for helping financially affected fishermen may lead to further pain. Paid through NOAA, financial relief often takes years.

The program is "almost universally believed to be broken," said Anthony Rogers, senior fisheries economics and climate fellow at the Ocean Conservancy. "Imagine you got a hurricane or tornado, and it destroyed your house, and then you're told, 'We'll pay you for that in three years.' Most people can't do that, and fishermen are no different."

In 2024, the Chinook salmon fishery was hit hard. A request to the state was made in April 2024, said Michael Milstein, a spokesman for the National Marine Fisheries Service. A determination of disaster came at the end of that year, he said, and Congress appropriated funds in 2025. The allocation of $21.3 million was made to the state by NOAA in 2026. At which point, the state had to submit a spending plan outlining how the funds were to be distributed.

The funds weren't disbursed until June 2026; two years and two months after the request was made.

Lori French, president of Central Coast Women for Fisheries, said crabbers will "just have to wait and see" what the El Niño brings.

"I know that we all will be ready to fish when the time comes," she said. "The ocean is always changing and that is one of the beauties of commercial fishing, we get the firsthand view."

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