Fisheries and Climate Change: Legal and Management Implications

Abstract

Many U.S. marine fisheries are showing the impacts of climate change. Some species are shifting outside their historical range in response to changing ecosystem conditions, especially warming waters, but also to changing habitats and ocean acidification. This new reality poses challenges to our current management regimes as fish and fishermen move, sometimes into areas dedicated to different historical uses or new ventures. This Perspective will explore how our current fishery management system is being tested by climate change impacts, the efforts underway to adapt science and management to a new normal in the ocean, the constraints of current law, and ideas for future law and regulation that is designed to enable management under climate-changed conditions.