Climate Change Comes for South Korea's Seafood

Photo: Pacific saury, a cold water fish.  Credit: Public domain.

TBR’s new favorite South Korean media is So.Prize 쏘프라이즈, a new concept site for data journalism. So.Prize publicly poses questions regarding social issues such as: “What is the value of the college diploma?” Members of the public are encouraged to submit their analysis based on publicly available data. Then the site selects the best answer and pays a cash prize of KRW 1m to the winner. To date, So.Prize has paid out KRW 34m.

A recent winner of So.Prize in response to a question about climate change was a graph showing the change in seafood production over time. Since mid-1990s, the production  of cold water fish such as Pacific saury 꽁치, Alaskan pollack 명태 and Japanese sandfish 도루묵 has all dropped, while production of warm water fish such as mackerel 고등어, anchovies 멸치 and flying squid 살오징어 increased significantly. (See previous coverage, “Climate Change Threatens the Sea Women.”)