Following the Fish

Warm water moves the fish. The fish move the prices. Most people never connect the two.

This is the ocean side of the same story. When the Pacific warm pool slides east in an El Niño, skipjack tuna — the fish in the can — follow it toward the central Pacific, shifting license income between small island nations.

The same warming shuts off the cold upwelling Peru's anchoveta depend on. Almost all of that catch becomes the fishmeal that feeds farmed salmon, so an anchovy crash quietly raises salmon costs worldwide. In the 2016 El Niño, warm Chilean fjords triggered a record algal bloom that killed tens of millions of farmed salmon and sent prices up sharply. Norway's growers took the windfall.

It is a modeled explainer, not a live feed. The point is how tightly the food chain and the price chain are wired together.

Muad'Dib Capital, the Atlas of the Physical Economy. For information only — not investment advice. Company lists are representative selections curated from public sources.

EL NIÑO · WHERE THE TUNA FLEET FISHES

Following the Fish

Tuna chase water warmer than 28 °C — the Pacific warm pool. This map overlays the real ocean temperature right now with where the fishing fleet actually is (satellite AIS), inside the island nations' waters that sell the fishing rights. In El Niño the warm pool slides east and the fleet follows; in La Niña it packs west.

ENSO state now: —

View

Fleet — gear

loading live data…

Who's fishing here

real — top flags by tuna-fleet effort (GFW, recent months)

Fleet effort by quarter

real vessel-hours, tuna gears (GFW, last ~year)