(At left) Sarah Weisberg with the R/V Seawolf, the flagship research vessel of Stony Brook University's School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, in the background; (At right) Weisberg operates a CTD (Conductivity, Temperature, and Depth) device, which measures the physics and chemistry of the water column. The data are used to understand how increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is affecting local ocean chemistry—and perhaps making New York waters less hospitable to certain marine life. Credit: Ellie Heywood

— By Chris Gonzales, Freelance Science Writer, New York Sea Grant

Stony Brook, NY, November 28, 2024 - Over the last two decades, the Earth’s oceans have been warming. Warmer waters mean fish populations grow—or fail to grow—in hard-to-predict ways. These swings from the norm bring serious complications for fishing communities. Valuable fisheries can collapse, as happened in 2022 in Alaska, when billions of snow crabs were lost, leading to millions of dollars of lost fishing revenue.

Expanding Climate Data

A group of scientists is trying to make sure managers in charge of the nation’s fisheries incorporate climate data into fisheries decisions.

Despite recent gains in generating climate information, its use in fisheries management remains limited, according to the Government Accountability Office.¹

These scientists held a virtual workshop in August 2022 and then pulled together what they describe as the eight best practices for climate-informed fisheries, all drawn from the workshop’s collaboration, the literature, and the authors’ experiences. They recently published an article on the topic.²

A New Way of Working

“We know that climate change has wide impacts on marine ecosystems and the fisheries that depend on them,” said Sarah Weisberg, one of the authors of the article. Weisberg is a fisheries ecologist and a National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS)-Sea Grant Joint Fellowship recipient. “Our systems of fisheries management are not, in general, built for a changing climate. In this paper, we share insights from many efforts across the country, all aimed at incorporating climate knowledge into fisheries management action. We hope this work can accelerate urgent efforts to sustain healthy fisheries in the face of climate change."

Building on Current Practice

The scientists see several opportunities to make fisheries management practice more sustainable. For example, some data and modeling used to assess fisheries’ health lacks clear, mechanistic links between environmental variables and fish populations. There has been some progress regionally in incorporating climate data, but there is no unified national plan. Other issues include resource and capacity limitations; mismatches in timelines, objectives, and priorities; and management rigidity.

New Tactics and Strategy

In their article, the team lays out several potential tactics and strategies. Fisheries managers can use these approaches to implement ideas and data from emerging climate science into their existing processes. These initial takeaways from the collaborative workshop are insights into the process, but don’t constitute actionable advice—yet. 

Some of the insights pertain to the complex fisheries management structure nationally. And how to identify and create “on-ramps” where unique or novel information can be fed into the system.
The collaborators are using tools such as conceptual modeling to break through some of these process hurdles. According to the authors, scientists and managers each benefit from these governance conceptual models.

One of the challenges is getting climate information into an already complex system with multiple mandates and priorities, and limited resources with which to meet them.

Enhancing Existing Infrastructure

The nation does have existing fisheries management infrastructure to work with. The fisheries Councils are part of this infrastructure. The Councils develop fishery management plans, research priorities, and set annual catch limits based on the best available science.³ Their annual stock assessments and subsequent quota or harvest rule setting process are core processes in fisheries management. 

Another part of the fisheries management system is the Road Map. The Road Map guides the implementation of the Ecosystem Based Fisheries Management (EBFM) policy over the next five years.⁴ The Councils work in conjunction with the Science Centers, regional arms of the NMFS where data is gathered, who regularly deliver Ecosystem Status Reports (ESRs) to Councils. Several of the Science Centers already include climate information in these reports. Scientists would like to see more climate data inform fisheries management across the country.

The Big Picture

"This paper represents the first impact of this work, showing how the workshop participants shared and learned from each others' experiences and then synthesized it all into inspirational ideas,” said Janelle Morano, another author of the article. She is also a fisheries ecologist and a National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS)-Sea Grant Joint Fellowship recipient. “In the complex system of fisheries management, it can be difficult to see beyond where one stands to appreciate how it all comes together and moves the needle in a positive direction. This paper is a way to transmit this information and perhaps inspire another group that is wrestling with similar difficulties of how to make adaptation happen.”

Sharing Experiences

“By supporting fellows like Janelle and myself to not only contribute to research on locally-relevant issues but also connect with the wider, national Sea Grant and NOAA-Fisheries communities, NYSG helps make sure that lessons learned in other parts of the country can be applied effectively in our local context,” said Weisberg. “This is really the goal of the paper, too—sharing experiences and articulating best practices so common challenges can more easily be overcome.”

Ensuring Needs Are Met 

There’s much work to be done in order to achieve effective climate-ready fisheries management. The team identified the following cross-cutting priority challenges: securing sufficient resources and staff, better incorporating social science, and aligning the timelines of science and management for rapid, coordinated climate responses. At root, fisheries management is a safety net designed to protect ecosystems and fishing communities from disruptions and irreversible environmental harm. Of course we don’t want to see a repeat of the Alaska crab fishery collapse. In a world where an entire fishery can be suddenly forced to close, even when it has been a few years in the making, it creates ripple effects not only for fishermen in the region, but also for the wider community and economy. This climate work is not just nice to have. It’s essential.


More Info: The Best Practices

Through their collaboration, the co-authors distilled eight best practices. They are:

1. Map out management processes and structure to identify “on-ramps” for climate information

2. Work smarter, not harder: align climate initiatives with existing management mandates and processes

3. Strategically incorporate qualitative information to deal with uncertainty

4. Start happy: pilot initiatives in low-controversy, low-risk settings

5. Engage stakeholders early and often

6. Emphasize local priorities and stakeholders’ lived experiences to increase buy-in, rather than imposing a climate framing

7. Employ structured processes to stay on track

8. Leverage collaborative research with fishermen to overcome resource constraints

The best practices they present in the article are promising approaches for bringing climate-related information to management attention and action.

Best Practice #1 — Through their work, the scientists identified what they called “best practice #1.” In effect, mapping out management processes emerged a key enabling first step — a “centerpiece” that shows how the other pieces might fit together.

More Info: Anticipating community response to warming

In a new paper, Weisberg and coauthors describe how two existing areas of ecological theory—trait-based ecology and regime shift theory—might help us better understand alterations in species abundance, distribution, and fitness due to a warming planet. They propose a set of principles to guide the merger of these two bodies of knowledge, applying them to marine communities in the North Atlantic. That article is available online: Merging trait-based ecology and regime shift theory to anticipate community responses to warming. Sarah J. Weisberg, et. al. Global Change Biology. October 2023. https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.17065 


References

¹ GAO, Federal Fisheries Management: Opportunities Exist to Enhance Climate Resilience (p. 74), Government Accountability Office, 2022. https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-22-105132

² Linking knowledge and action for climate-ready fisheries: Emerging best practices across the US. Julia G. Masona, Sarah J. Weisberg, et. al. Marine Policy. October 2023. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpol.2023.105758

³ Understanding Fisheries Management in the United States | NOAA Fisheries

⁴ Ecosystem-Based Fisheries Management Road Map | NOAA Fisheries


More Info: New York Sea Grant

Established in 1966, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)’s National Sea Grant College Program promotes the informed stewardship of coastal resources in 34 joint federal/state university-based programs in every U.S. coastal state (marine and Great Lakes) and Puerto Rico. The Sea Grant model has also inspired similar projects in the Pacific region, Korea and Indonesia.

Since 1971, New York Sea Grant (NYSG) has represented a statewide network of integrated research, education and extension services promoting coastal community economic vitality, environmental sustainability and citizen awareness and understanding about the State’s marine and Great Lakes resources.

NYSG historically leverages on average a 3 to 6-fold return on each invested federal dollar, annually. We benefit from this, as these resources are invested in Sea Grant staff and their work in communities right here in New York.

Through NYSG’s efforts, the combined talents of university scientists and extension specialists help develop and transfer science-based information to many coastal user groups—businesses and industries, federal, state and local government decision-makers and agency managers, educators, the media and the interested public.

New York Sea Grant, one of the largest of the state Sea Grant programs, is a cooperative program of the State University of New York (SUNY) and Cornell University. The program maintains Great Lakes offices at Cornell University, SUNY Buffalo, Rochester Institute of Technology, SUNY Oswego, the Wayne County Cooperative Extension office in Newark, and in Watertown. In the State's marine waters, NYSG has offices at Stony Brook University and with Cornell Cooperative Extension of Nassau County on Long Island, in Queens, at Brooklyn College, with Cornell Cooperative Extension in NYC, in Bronx, with Cornell Cooperative Extension of Ulster County in Kingston, and with Cornell Cooperative Extension of Westchester County in Elmsford.

For updates on Sea Grant activities: www.nyseagrant.org, follow us on social media (Facebook, Twitter/X, Instagram, Bluesky, LinkedIn, and YouTube). NYSG offers a free e-list sign up via www.nyseagrant.org/nycoastlines for its flagship publication, NY Coastlines/Currents, which it publishes 2-3 times a year.