Small pelagic forage fish species account for more than 30% by weight of the total landings of marine capture fisheries around the world and play an important role in the transfer of energy through mid-trophic levels in marine ecosystems and in global protein security, including the growing aquaculture industry. The oscillations of pelagic forage fish populations are dramatic and cyclical in response to climate variability on multi-decadal scales. This working group is a platform to coordinate and perform collaborative work to advance knowledge and tools to understand the drivers of forage species.
The group is tasked to:
- review recent progress on understanding how various drivers (environmental and/or anthropogenic) impact the population dynamics of forage species in different ecosystems and whether and how potential drivers shift with changes in ecosystem state;
- foster comparative analyses of forage communities across different social-ecological systems based on updated field data sets of climate indices, environmental factors and tipping points, and new fish biology and ecophysiology;
- identify, prioritize, and coordinate research most needed to advance our knowledge and capacity to predict the population dynamics of forage species at both short (seasonal to inter-annual) and long (decadal to centennial) time scales;
- recommend strategies of marine ecosystem monitoring and fisheries management of forage species that contribute to sustainable ecosystem-based fisheries management, through biophysical, ecosystem and/or socio-economic models.
- organize workshops and topic sessions at meetings including the international pelagic symposium taking place in La Paz, Mexico in May 2026 showcasing integrative analyses of this working group and recent advances.
