Commercial fishermen aboard the Uraganny seiner of the Dobroflot Fishing Company fishing for Alaska Pollock in the Peter the Great Bay in Russia.

(Yuri Smityuk\TASS via Getty Images)

At a Glance

Warming seas are driving fish toward cooler waters, which are often under the economic jurisdiction of other countries.Fish are migrating up to 43 miles per decade toward cooler waters.Existing international fishing laws do not address changes in distribution.

Fishing wars are already breaking out and will only worsen as global warming drives fish to migrate to cooler, sometimes exclusively controlled waters, a new study says.

According to the study published Friday in the journal Science, are migrating towardthe poles by as much as 43 miles per decade and, in some instances,into waters controlled by countries with exclusive economic rights to the fish within their waters.

This trend is expected to accelerate in the coming decadesand will likely ignitebitter battles between countries, the team ofresearchers from six international universities say.

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The researchers analyzed 892 species of commercially important fish, along with261 "," which are areas of the oceanwhere countries have exclusive rights under international law.

The study notes that some 70 countries are expected to have one or more new fishery stocks in their exclusive offshore economic zones by 2100. For now, there are no international fishing lawsthat address changes in distribution.

The lack of specific laws can create “a loophole that often allows newly-fished stocks to be heavily exploited before meaningful standards are developed,” Malin Pinsky, the study’s lead author and an ecologist at Rutgers School of Environmental and Biology, wrote in the paper.

“It’s like ,” Pinsky told the HuffingtonPost. “If they both race for it, it’s likely they’re going to get frosting and cake smeared all over the table, and not as much cake for everyone ― as opposed to cutting the cake neatly and sharing it.”

Fishing wars are nothing new. In the 1600s, , the Washington Post reported. And fishing wars are not limited to countries. New Jersey has been trying for years to convince the federal government to increase its quota of flounder now that the species has migrated north from North Carolina waters because of warming temperatures, according to the Huffington Post.

"Existing fisheries management and governance are largely predicated on population geographies that remain broadly static through time," Pinsky wrote. "Challenges emerge when stock distributions become less predictable and are compounded when states act unilaterally to exploit the resultant windfall."

The researchers note that unless countries come up with a way to share waters and avoid conflicts,fishing wars will not only lead tofar fewer fish but, in some areas, will lead to serious food security and, possibly, violence that could lead to actual wars.

"I've got a 3-year-old son, and sometimes it seems like ," Pinsky told National Geographic, noting that the problem is likely already more prevalent than anyone realizes.

"I just don't think we're prepared for this globally," he said.

The situation could prove particularly dire for equatorial countries that depend on seafood as their primary protein source, Pinsky said, adding that tropical nations will likely have far fewer fish overall in the years to come.