Future Seas

A Physics-to-Fisheries Management Strategy Evaluation for the California Current System

Future Seas is a project exploring potential impacts of climate change on the swordfish, albacore, and Pacific sardine fisheries in the California Current System. A suite of dynamical, statistical, and conceptual models is being applied to explore future scenarios in an “end-to-end” framework spanning physical changes to socio-economic consequences, and to evaluate uncertainty associated with individual elements of the modeling framework.

Objective

To evaluate the impacts of climate change on US-managed marine species and fishing communities California Current Ecosystem and identify climate-resilient management strategies.

Key elements of the project work plan for the California Current Ecosystem

• Produce regional climate projections, using output from global climate models to force a high resolution regional ocean model (ROMS) coupled with a biogeochemical model.
• Predict productivity and distribution changes for Pacific sardine, albacore, and swordfish, and the socio-economic impacts of these changes on fishing communities using climate projections in conjunction with ecological and socio-economic models.
• Evaluate current catch advice and spatial management strategies for the Pacific sardine, albacore, and swordfish fisheries given the potential future impacts of climate variability and change.
• Explore possible policy and management responses to climate change and resultant socioeconomic impacts on fishery participants and fishing communities using management scenarios.

• NOAA Fisheries
• UC Santa Cruz
• Rutgers University
• University of South Carolina