Future fisheries in a changing ocean

Abstract

Marine fisheries provide protein, income, and employment for millions of people across the world, but future fisheries face multiple stressors, including climate change. To ensure continued flows of benefits from fisheries, we need modern, forward-looking ways of setting sustainability objectives that consider ecosystem carrying capacity, health of fish stocks, societal nutritional and economic needs, and equitable distribution of fishery benefits. Transdisciplinary teams of oceanographers, climatologists, ecologists, economists, data scientists, and decision scientists working together with fishery managers, municipal leaders, fishers, aquaculturists, and seafood supply chain businesses can reimagine sustainable fisheries in a changing world. Through coordinated, distributed research nodes, these types of teams will develop frameworks, information, infrastructure, and application pathways needed to ensure vibrant, resilient fisheries and fishing communities in healthy marine ecosystems in future decades.