Linking Knowledge and Action for Climate-Ready Fisheries: Emerging Best Practices across the US.

Weisberg, Sarah¹*, Julia Mason², Janelle Morano³, Katie Westfall², Kristin Kleisner², ¹Stony Brook University, ²Environmental Defense Fund, ³Cornell University

A changing climate brings both immense challenges and novel opportunities to fisheries. To keep pace, both scientists and managers are innovating in their approaches. The 2016 Fisheries Climate Science Strategy released by NOAA, for example, laid out 7 interdependent objectives critical for effective management under climate change. In the intervening years, substantial progress has been made, and we are increasingly able to generate scientific knowledge about climate and how it impacts fisheries. However, climate-related information is still rarely incorporated into management processes and decisions. Existing efforts to do so tend to be local initiatives, and communication across regions remains limited. Yet if we cannot increase broad uptake of climate information into management processes, we stand little chance of building climate resilient fisheries. In order to catalyze national scale progress, we convened a workshop in August 2022 with participants from councils, regional offices, and science centers across the US, as well as national NMFS representatives. Our primary aim was to share individual experiences incorporating climate information into fisheries management to date. Participants reflected on successes as well as sticking points of specific approaches, and discussed how to advance new ideas in their own regions. Building on these conversations, we distilled a set of cross-cutting best practices for linking knowledge and action for climate-ready fisheries. I will review those nationwide best practices here, in order to spark discussion on how they can be strategically applied in the Northeast.