New research from the University of British Columbia (UBC) says that many equatorial regions could lose their most important commercial fish species by 2050. Researchers looked at 802 species to see how they reacted to warm water. They then took climate change scenarios from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

If the waters in tropical regions warm by 3 degrees by 2100, the IPCC worst case scenario, fish will move away from their current habitats at a rate of 16 miles per decade. Under the best case scenario, of only 1 degree of warming, fish will move away at their current habitat at a rate of about 10 miles per decade.

These predicted changes are consistent with observed behavior over the last few decades.

“The tropics will be the overall losers. This area has a high dependence on fish for food, diet and nutrition. We’ll see a loss of fish populations that are important to the fisheries and communities in these regions,” said William Cheung, associate professor at the UBC Fisheries Centre in a statement. Cheung is co-author of the study, published in ICES Journal of Marine Science.

While this news is tragic and potentially devastating for communities in tropical regions it could provide substantial economic opportunities for people in northern and Arctic regions.

“As fish move to cooler waters, this generates new opportunities for fisheries in the Arctic. On the other hand it means it could disrupt the species that live there now and increase competition for resources,” said Miranda Jones, a UBC Nereus Fellow and lead author of this study.

The new study does not take into account earlier reports that suggest global fisheries could collapse by 2050 due to overfishing and pollution. In other words, the problem described in the UBC report may not come to pass if the fish do not live long enough to migrate.