Earlier this summer, the Armed Forces of the Philippines spotted dozens of Chinese fishing vessels in—or very near to—the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone. This influx occurred just weeks after the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced, “El Niño is here.”

Are climate change and declining fisheries productivity likely to lead to a future of fish wars, or can existing fisheries management institutions evolve to help prevent large-scale fisheries conflict? From militarized fishing practices in the South China Sea, to the ongoing wrangling between the European Union and Great Britain over fishing rights, to violent clashes between indigenous and non-indigenous fishers in Canada, fisheries are at the center of many international, or at least inter-governmental, disputes.

A significant increase in fisheries-related conflicts in the Indian Ocean since 2000 is heightening regional tensions. These conflicts have ranged from purely verbal and diplomatic disputes to armed attacks on fishing vessels by coast guards and navies. These disputes are most often low-intensity, but constitute true “wild card” scenarios in which competing powers’ navies reach the brink of engagement due to the actions of third parties that they neither command nor control.

What do we (think we) know about the links between climate change and armed conflict? Early attempts to theorize what climate-related conflict might look like were exceptionally successful in sparking policymaker interest in and funding of research on climate-conflict links. But they were more like works of science fiction than science. Since then, research on climate-conflict links has exploded, with hundreds of articles and working papers published on the subject. Moreover, the findings have been all over the map, with some arguing for strong impacts of climate on conflict at multiple temporal and spatial scales, while others argue—in both specific instances, about the supposedly climate-fueled Syrian Civil War, and more generally—that climate-conflict links are overstated.

In “Africa’s smallest war,” both Kenya and Uganda lay claim to Migingo Island, a tiny island in the waters of Lake Victoria. While the claims are over the island, the conflict is about something else entirely: Lates niloticus, also known as Nile perch, a tasty white fish that swims in the waters surrounding the island. The fish forms the backbone of the Lake Victoria economy but is increasingly hard to come by along the lakeshore. Catches are in decline, incomes are dropping, and the Ugandan government is taking increasingly harsh, militarized steps to help revive the fishery.

Recently, Nature Climate Change published a new study demonstrating significant sampling bias in the research that informs our understanding of whether climate change will accelerate human conflict. I was a peer reviewer of “Sampling bias in climate–conflict research,” and I wrote an accompanying “News and Views” piece summarizing it. I am fascinated by the issue of sampling bias; it’s perhaps the most consequential and least recognized form of bias in the social sciences, with potentially massive consequences for what we (think we) know about a host of phenomenon.

Fisheries are a surprisingly common reason for conflict between countries. Between 1993 and 2010, 11 percent of militarized interstate disputes (MIDs) – conflicts short of war between two sovereign states – involved fisheries, fishers, or fishing vessels. While the conflicts often involve fresh fish, the implications for global peace and prosperity stink like fermented herring. As climate change threatens to change fish habitats, new governance strategies may be needed to prevent these “fishy MIDs” from sparking broader conflicts.