The life cycle, fisheries and management of the main fishing resources of the Patos Lagoon and adjacent coastal waters are reviewed. Over recent decades, fish landings in Rio Grande have decreased by over 60%. The stocks of the large-sized, slow-growing fishes Genidens barbus and G. planifrons, Pogonias cromis and Rhinobatos horkelii collapsed in the early 1980s. The pink shrimp Penaeus paulensis stock was reduced by intense fishing of subadults in the estuary and of adults at sea. The sciaenid fishes Micropogonias furnieri, Macrodon atricauda, Umbrina canosai and Cynoscion guatucupa, which together represent more than half of local marine fish landings, are overexploited. These sciaenids are more resilient to intense fishing when compared with other families because of their early maturation and high fecundity, but high exploitation rates are unsustainable in the long run. The pelagic migrant fishes Pomatomus saltatrix and Mugil liza and the blue crab Callinectes sapidus are at the limit of exploitation. The recovery of these stocks will depend on diminishing the fishing pressure they have suffered in recent decades. Despite legal protection, the present enforcement has proven to be insufficient and intense fishing by a large number of industrial and small-scale fishing boats still goes on. Overall, the future of the estuarine and coastal fishing resources is uncertain and the recovery of the large long-living species of the higher trophic levels is unlikely.

Climate change impacts on fishery resources have been widely reported worldwide. Nevertheless, a knowledge gap remains for the warm-temperate Southwest Atlantic Ocean—a global warming hotspot that sustains important industrial and small-scale fisheries. By combining a trait-based framework and long-term landing records, we assessed species’ sensitivity to climate change and potential changes in the distribution of important fishery resources (n = 28; i.e., bony fishes, chondrichthyans, crustaceans, and mollusks) in Southern Brazil, Uruguay, and the northern shelf of Argentina. Most species showed moderate or high sensitivity, with mollusks (e.g., sedentary bivalves and snails) being the group with the highest sensitivity, followed by chondrichthyans. Bony fishes showed low and moderate sensitivities, while crustacean sensitivities were species-specific. The stock and/or conservation status overall contributed the most to higher sensitivity. Between 1989 and 2019, species with low and moderate sensitivity dominated regional landings, regardless of the jurisdiction analyzed. A considerable fraction of these landings consisted of species scoring high or very high on an indicator for potential to change their current distribution. These results suggest that although the bulk of past landings were from relatively climate-resilient species, future catches and even entire benthic fisheries may be jeopardized because (1) some exploited species showed high or very high sensitivities and (2) the increase in the relative representation of landings in species whose distribution may change. This paper provides novel results and insights relevant for fisheries management from a region where the effects of climate change have been overlooked, and which lacks a coordinated governance system for climate-resilient fisheries.