Climate Change
Marine fisheries and fishing communities are at high risk from climate-driven changes to ocean ecosystems, such as ocean warming and acidification. Climate-driven impacts to fisheries could include changes in productivity and/or distribution of some fish stocks. Climate change is also impacting the timing and magnitude of seasonal biological events, such as plankton blooms, which can alter the food web structure. These changes are posing new and ongoing challenges for fisheries management across the nation.
The regional fishery management councils are leading and participating in a wide range of initiatives designed to prepare for, and respond to, climate-driven changes and fishery management challenges. Some of these initiatives are described in the individual Council resources linked at the bottom of the page.
CCC Consensus Positions
In November 2021, the Council Coordination Committee (CCC) adopted the following consensus positions on behalf of the eight regional fishery management Councils:
Climate Change & Regional Action Plans For Climate Science
“The CCC believes that climate change demands a response that is commensurate with the magnitude of the threat. The sustainability and performance of our fisheries are at stake, and while fishery managers are unable to address the underlying causes of climate change, they are nonetheless tasked with meeting our conservation and management mandates in a changing environment. Climate change will impact entire marine ecosystems, and a single-species management approach will likely not be sufficient to understand and account for these changes. Addressing climate change will require establishing the support to enable fishery managers to develop creative solutions to new challenges.
Fishery managers will also need a strong scientific foundation to support climate-ready fisheries management. Managing climate-ready fisheries is a long-term endeavor that will require investing in the information needed to support informed decision-making, along with a commensurate shift in resources and attention. Successful management already depends on the availability of timely and accurate information at all points in the decision-making process, and in a changing environment, this will become even more critical.
The ability of Councils to successfully manage fisheries in the face of climate change will require the ability to adapt to changing species distributions and productivity. However, many regions currently lack the robust baseline of fish and habitat surveys necessary to understand and quantify changes in abundance, distribution, diversity, and status clearly attributable to climate change, which will also make it more difficult to account for the impacts of climate change in analyses. It will also make it more difficult to comply with new legislative requirements, such as determining the impacts of climate change on future conditions of stocks and fishery participants. It will also be more difficult to account for the impacts of climate change in analyses. As the Councils continue to balance increasing competition for the ocean space – whether from protected areas, offshore energy development, or other users – these conflicts will inhibit the ability of fishermen and the Councils to be flexible.”
CCC Consensus Position on Council Jurisdiction
“Regional Fishery Management Councils (RFMCs) are facing unprecedented management issues as a result of climate change. The changing environment is affecting the productivity, abundance, and distribution of some fish stocks, and it is becoming increasingly clear that all those involved in fisheries need to prepare for different, unpredictable futures. As stocks move, the RFMCs are grappling with how to adapt their management approaches to ensure fair and effective management of the stocks under their authority. Many regional Councils lack a robust baseline index of fish and habitat distribution, with rigorous temporal and spatial monitoring and surveys to assess the changes in abundance, diversity, and health to quantitatively attribute these fluctuations to climate change. Without this spatial survey data, the Council actions may result in overly precautionary harvest opportunities due to these uncertainties in assessment of climate impacts on stocks.
While a need to formalize a process for revising Council authority as a result of changes in fishery distribution may seem necessary, many of these issues are already addressed by the Councils themselves. This has been a particular area of focus on the Atlantic coast, where fisheries management authority in federal waters is divided between the New England, Mid-Atlantic, and South Atlantic Councils. These Councils have recognized this challenge and are working closely with each other to adapt to changing conditions. For example, the three East coast Councils are currently collaborating with the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission and NOAA Fisheries on a climate change scenario planning initiative. Through this structured process, fishery scientists and managers are exploring how to best adapt and respond to jurisdictional and governance issues related to shifting fishery stocks.
A number of fishery management plans already account for overlap between Council management areas. For example, the New England Fishery Management Council and Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council manage two fisheries under joint fishery management plans and cooperate on the management of several other fisheries that overlap the geographic areas of both Councils. Similar arrangements exist between the Mid-Atlantic and South Atlantic Councils and the South Atlantic and Gulf Councils.
Frequent reassignments of management authority could cause disruptions in Council operations, duplications of effort, Science Center workload bottlenecks, and losses of institutional knowledge among the staff, Council and SSC members, and others who have acquired specialized knowledge about the management or biology of a stock through years of involvement with the fishery. While major changes in management regimes may be warranted in certain cases, the CCC believes that less disruptive methods of adapting to climate change should be pursued first.”
See the MSA Working Paper available on this page for additional details and regional perspectives.
