With new predictions of future world population reaching 9.6 billion by 2050 and the related spectre of a global food crisis, the necessity to improve our ability to manage world's fisheries has never been more pressing. A fundamental step in this direction and the main goal of NeTNPPAO is the improvement of near-term (i.e. seasonal to decadal) predictions of Net Primary Production (NPP) in the Atlantic Ocean. NPP is the rate of production of phytoplankton biomass, the primary source of food for marine animal life and there is close relationship between fish biomass and NPP in the open ocean. According to “The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture-2012”3 (Food and Agriculture Organization - FAO), in 2010 the Eastern Tropical Atlantic sustained two of the top three fishery industries of the African continent (Morocco and Senegal) with total catches of ~4 million tons while the Northeast and Northwest Atlantic areas together summed ~11 million tons of landed fish with important economic impacts on both Europe and North America. However, all 6 Atlantic fishing areas identified in the report have shown decreasing trends or considerable fluctuations in catches during the past decades resulting from either environmental variability, fishing pressure or a combination of both. Many studies point to a tight connection between fluctuations in fish populations and both natural climate variability and anthropogenic climate change. However, in the past fish stocks management has often relied on the assumption that marine ecosystems were in long-term equilibrium, with fishing pressure being the dominant factor controlling fish populations. This resulted in management strategies based on extrapolations from historical time-series of fish catches, leading in some cases to overestimated sustainable harvest rates that contributed to the decline of fish stocks. Therefore, the improvement of ecosystem-based strategies is becoming a priority for near-future fisheries management.
