Opportunities for fishery partnerships to advance climate-ready fisheries science and management

Climate change poses unprecedented challenges for fisheries management systems. Increased environmental variability and uncertainty due to climate change are creating shifts in productivity and distribution of fished species, and subsequent social-ecological impacts that require timely implementation of adaptive management strategies. Yet many proposed “climate-ready” fisheries actions – such as integrating climate factors into stock assessments and increasing flexibility in decision-making – either complicate or add to existing responsibilities of fishery managers and strain existing institutions. In the United States, many fisheries management agencies have explicitly acknowledged certain capacity shortfalls and institutional limitations to addressing current and projected impacts of climate change on marine fisheries. Many resource and capacity gaps across the adaptive fisheries management cycle could be filled through more effective fishery partnerships among management agencies, fishing industries, private sector, and academia. Partnership approaches are key to unlocking capacity for achieving climate-ready fisheries yet expanded implementation may require a shift towards a model that empowers and obligates fishery stakeholders to take on expanded roles with appropriate guidelines and oversight, while establishing increased roles for agencies as facilitators and auditors for certain tasks. Building and institutionalizing more effective fishery partnerships to achieve climate-ready fisheries will require clear guidance and enabling conditions.