El Niño is here, and it’s already scrambling fisheries throughout the Pacific

A "super" El Niño, the natural weather pattern that warms Pacific Ocean surface waters every few years, is already shaking up fishing worldwide. In Peru, officials have effectively canceled the anchovy season because the fish have moved to waters too deep for normal fishing nets to reach. India is bracing for smaller catches of mackerel. Meanwhile, tuna fishing off Southern California has been unusually strong, since warm-water species like bluefin tuna and swordfish are straying closer to the coast than usual.

This isn't really a home-energy story, but it does explain something you may notice at the grocery store or on a menu. El Niño shifts where fish live by weakening the winds that normally push cold, nutrient-rich water up from the ocean depths. Species like anchovies and salmon, which depend on that upwelling, get pushed into deeper or thinner feeding grounds and become scarcer, while warm-water fish like tuna become easier to catch elsewhere. In Peru, prices for jack mackerel and a local fish called corvina have reportedly doubled, pushing families toward chicken instead. Shrimp prices, on the other hand, tend to drop during El Niño years.

Scientists say climate change is likely to make these events more frequent and more intense, meaning the price swings and supply disruptions in seafood could become a more regular pattern rather than an occasional one.