Climate change is having profound impacts on marine ecosystems and fisheries through ocean warming, marine heatwaves, ocean acidification, increasing storminess, sea level rise and other effects. As climate change permeates marine ecosystems and extends into fisheries, fishing industry participants, communities, and management systems are adapting to changes in species availability, fishing conditions, and shoreside infrastructure. While climate adaptation is ongoing in fisheries around the world, adaptation approaches have not been broadly characterized.
This session builds an understanding of the nature of climate impacts and the state of climate adaptation in marine fisheries. We seek to identify climate events that spur fisheries adaptation on both short- and long-term scales, including but not limited to the widespread North Atlantic marine heatwaves experienced in 2023. We also intend to look beyond the impacts to the adaptation responses by fisheries, communities, and management bodies. Contributions to the session will help build an understanding of the types of adaptation actions that are being pursued, goals and effectiveness of those actions, factors that facilitate, impede, or limit adaptation or the scale at which it is pursued, and trade-offs among adaptation approaches.
We invite contributions on topics such as:
- case studies of climate impacts and adaptation responses in specific fisheries
- adaptation actions pursued by different actors in fishery systems, including harvesters, supply chain businesses, communities, and management institutions
- comparisons of the effectiveness of and trade-offs among specific adaptation strategies
- considerations of adaptation responses in climate vulnerability and resilience assessments
- management measures needed to support proactive climate adaptation in marine fisheries
This session provides an opportunity to establish a baseline synthesis on the state of climate adaptation in marine fisheries.
