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Warming oceans could spark international conflict over fisheries as it is forcing fish species to migrate in search of colder waters, says a new study. Climate change is forcing fish species to shift their habitats faster than the world’s system for allocating fish stocks, according to the new research published in the journal Science. Fisheries face a serious new challenge with climate change driving oceans to conditions not experience historically. “The right to harvest particular species of fish is often decided by national and regional fisheries management bodies. Those bodies have made the rules based on the notion that particular fish species live in particular waters and don’t move much. Well, they’re moving now because climate change is warming ocean temperatures,” said lead researcher, assistant professor Dr Malin Pinsky from Rutgers University-New Brunswick in New Jersey, US, who led the study. Many commercially important fish species could move their range hundreds of kilometres northwards and the movement has already begun, according to the research.