Regional Fishery Management Councils Climate Actions

Each regional fishery management council is taking actions to increase the climate resiliency of their fisheries. These activities represent the different ecosystems, fisheries, and climate-related challenges being experienced by each council.

Joint Council Initiatives

In 2020 the Mid-Atlantic, New England, and South Atlantic fishery management councils, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, and NOAA Fisheries initiated a scenario planning exercise. They explored jurisdictional and governance issues related to climate change and shifting fishery stocks. The scenario planning work was a structured, 3-year, multi-step process. The first half of the initiative focused on exploring drivers of change in East Coast fisheries, culminating in the development of a scenario framework developed by hundreds of fishery stakeholders. In the second half, fishery managers used the scenarios as a platform from which to explore the consequences for fishery governance and management. This allowed them to consider changes that may be beneficial under a range of different future conditions. The exercise resulted in a menu of potential action items to increase the climate resilience of fisheries.

The New England Council collaborated with the Mid-Atlantic Council to integrate the results from the Northeast Regional Habitat Assessment, the Northeast Fish and Shellfish Climate Vulnerability Assessment, and the Atlantic Coastal Fish Habitat Partnership habitat-species matrix for use in fisheries management. The major objectives were to create a habitat-species vulnerability matrix and develop species narratives for 66 managed and forage species in the region. The matrix identifies the dependence or occurrence of species on specific habitat types while conveying information about species and habitat vulnerability to climate change. The species narratives describe the species climate vulnerability, species habitat dependencies or associations across life stages, and the climate vulnerability of those habitats. Species with different habitat dependency between New England and the Mid-Atlantic have descriptions and tables for each region.

In 2020, the Northeast Region Coordinating Council (which includes the New England Council, Mid-Atlantic Council, Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center, and NOAA’s Greater Atlantic Regional Fisheries Office) implemented a new stock assessment process. It is designed to improve the quality, timing, and planning of Northeast stock assessments. As part of this process, new Terms of Reference were developed that task scientists with identifying relevant ecosystem and climate influences on a particular stock and how those factors may impact the available data, modeling approaches, reference points, stock status, and projections.

New England Council

The New England Council drafted an example Fishery Ecosystem Plan that proposes a framework to manage fisheries. The plan is more adaptive to changes in ecosystem production, is more flexible for fishermen, and sets catch limits that are consistent with achieving a range of objectives and improved ecosystem services. The draft plan sets a limit on total ecosystem catches that consider system-wide primary productivity and net import of energy from neighboring ecosystem production units. It uses harvest control rules that set catch limits for stock complexes that have common characteristics and sets biomass floors for individual species. This has the potential to reduce inefficiencies, such as catching prohibited fish. Councils use management evaluation tools to explore the potential costs and benefits of an ecosystem approach compared to the current single-species management approach.

Mid-Atlantic Council

The Mid-Atlantic Council completed a comprehensive review of the Ecosystem Approach to Fisheries Management Risk Assessment in 2023. A revised risk assessment will be completed in spring 2024. The revised assessment will include updated information and indicators from the 2024 Mid-Atlantic State of the Ecosystem Report and other additional analysis from Council staff. Risk assessment is one activity in support of the objectives from the Ecosystem Approach to Fisheries Management Guidance Document. Of particular interest to the Council was the development of tools to incorporate the effects of species, fleet, habitat, and climate interactions into management and science programs. Because there are so many possible ecosystem interactions to consider, risk assessment was adopted as the first step to identify priority interactions. Estuarine and offshore habitat were identified as at high risk using indicators derived from the Northeast Climate Vulnerability Assessment.

As Atlantic surfclam have shifted toward deeper waters in recent years, catches including both surfclam and ocean quahog have become more common and harder for fishermen to avoid. Mixed catches are undesirable, as processors can only process one species at a time. Current regulations don’t allow for surfclam and ocean quahog to be landed together on the same trip. The Mid-Atlantic Council is currently considering changes to the species separation requirements for the Atlantic surfclam and ocean quahog fisheries to address this issue.

Recognizing that climate change can give rise to fisheries for previously unmanaged stocks, the Mid-Atlantic Council has taken steps to avoid potential overexploitation of emerging fisheries. In 2016, the Council approved a commercial possession limit for more than 50 forage species that were previously unmanaged in mid-Atlantic federal waters. This action prohibits the development of new and expansion of existing commercial fisheries on unmanaged forage species in mid-Atlantic waters until the Council has had an opportunity to assess the scientific information and consider potential impacts. The Council receives an annual report on commercial landings of “unmanaged” species (i.e., species not managed by the Mid-Atlantic, New England, or South Atlantic councils, NOAA Fisheries, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, or states). These reports allow the Council to monitor landings and determine if further evaluation is needed.

South Atlantic Council

In 2020-2021, the South Atlantic Council hosted participatory workshops in North Carolina, Virginia, and Florida to learn about key factors—including environmental changes—that influence the dolphin and wahoo fishery. They identified major concerns and important values for the fishery stakeholders. The fishermen emphasized the social and economic dimensions of the fishery over biological stock drivers. Sub-regional and species differences were observed based on the linkages developed during the workshops. Two key differences between the areas were the number of species available to target and the lack of large dolphins in South Florida. The researchers focused on the dolphin abundance change and developed potential explanations.

The South Atlantic Council is leading a series of port meetings along the East Coast throughout 2024 intended to improve understanding of the commercial and recreational king and Spanish mackerel fisheries. The effort is in cooperation with the New England and Mid-Atlantic councils and the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission. Objectives for the port meetings include maintaining the integrity of fishing communities and achieving an equitable management structure under climate change.

Gulf of Mexico Council

The Gulf of Mexico Council set catch limits for red grouper based on the 2019 red grouper stock assessment that included red tide mortality within its analysis. Red tides were explicitly modeled using an index derived from satellite oceanography in the red grouper stock assessment. In response to stakeholder concerns about the 2018 red tide event, the Southeast Fisheries Science Center solicited oral histories and participatory mapping to compare the 2017-2019 red tide to previous events in terms of severity, recovery time, and species killed.

Pacific Council

Under the Coastal Pelagic Species Fishery Management Plan, the Pacific Council uses a harvest control rule for sardines. The plan considers recent average sea surface temperature off of Southern California to predict sardine productivity. The Pacific sardine fishery has been closed since 2015 because of low estimated biomass. Small-scale and live bait fishing can continue but remains subject to annual catch limits and other management measures.

The Pacific Council completed a Climate and Communities Initiative scenario planning exercise to help understand the effects of near-term climate shift and long-term climate change on fish populations, fisheries, and fishing communities. They identified ways in which the Council could incorporate such understanding into its decision-making. While individual fishery management plans will likely examine the impacts of climate change on particular species, this initiative focuses on the combined, long-term effects of changes on multiple species across all management plans.

The Pacific Council is conducting a Climate Informed Fisheries Management Initiative to develop and implement strategies to improve the responsiveness of fisheries management to climate variability and change. It’s intended to set the stage for consideration of climate-informed fisheries management. The Council uses a collaborative process that includes Integrated Ecosystem Assessment scientists, and fishery management teams and subpanels. This group will

• evaluate existing indicators and develop climate and ecosystem indicators to inform scientific uncertainty when setting harvest policies
• assess and understand the resilience of West Coast fishing communities to climate change and explore and consider management strategies to improve resilience
• explore and develop mechanisms to incorporate nimbleness or increased responsiveness into fisheries management to enhance the capacity of individuals or communities respond to climate change

North Pacific Council

The North Pacific Council created the Climate Change Task Force and the Local Knowledge/Traditional Knowledge Task Force to facilitate work toward climate-ready fisheries management. They seek to ensure both short-term and long-term resilience for the interconnected ecological and human communities of the Bering Sea. The Task Force assembled a Climate Ready synthesis that used multiple knowledge sources (e.g., Indigenous knowledge, traditional knowledge, and local knowledge) to assess how climate-ready the current management system is and identify options for improved climate resilience. The Task Force will work with the Council and stakeholders to develop a suite of potential climate-resilient management tools and policies.

The North Pacific Council has requested risk table evaluations for all groundfish and crab stock assessments to help fisheries managers better understand uncertainties within and outside the stock assessment model. Ecosystem change, which provides related information on climate change factors, is one of the four categories of risk evaluated in the risk tables. The two main sources of information for risk tables are Ecosystem Status Reports and ecosystem and socio-economic profiles. According to North Pacific Council officials, the risk tables allow the Council to have more structured discussions about risk and uncertainties when making fisheries management decisions. There is a review summarizing the inclusion of risk tables in stock assessments for fisheries managed by the Council.

Western Pacific Council

In December 2021, the Western Pacific Council recommended a regulatory amendment to modify mitigation measures to replace blue-dyed fish bait with tori lines (bird scaring or streamer lines) in the Hawaii deep-set longline fishery. The use of tori lines is intended to help prevent seabird interactions with longline fishing gear. Seabird interactions with longline fishing have increased, in part because of climate variables. The recommended amendment was based on a fishing industry–led collaborative project with Hawaii longline vessels.

In March 2023, the Western Pacific Council received a final report on a joint project to explore the use of a new model to evaluate spatial decision-making to avoid fishery and sea turtle interactions. In 2018, the Western Pacific Council, Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center, Pacific Islands Regional Office, and University of Florida collaborated on TurtleWatch. The product helps vessels avoid preferred thermal habitat based on sea surface temperature and turtle interactions. The model considered different environmental variables, as well as trade-offs of spatial closures on the industry and other protected species interactions. The longline industry had participants in attendance to provide on-the-water observations, discuss results, evaluate trade-offs, and recommend how to avoid protected species interactions. The Council endorsed additional work by the Pacific Islands Fishery Science Center for future application of the developed models.

The Council releases Annual Stock Assessment and Fishery Evaluation (SAFE) reports for the Hawaii, American Samoa and Mariana Archipelagos, and Pacific Remote Island Areas and Pacific Pelagic fisheries. The collaborative effort involves the Council, NOAA Fisheries, and state and territorial fishery management agencies. Since 2015, the Climate and Oceanic Indicators module has provided valuable data on factors related to current climate and oceanic conditions in the Pacific. This serves as a resource for fishing communities, resource managers, and businesses about the changing climate. Factors like El Niño can impact marine ecosystem productivity and catchability of managed fish stocks. The Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center is developing a dashboard for pelagic ocean and climate indicators to provide a snapshot of trends, unique indicator visualizations, and monthly time series data. The data will be available to the public in spring 2024.

The Council worked with the NOAA Fisheries Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center and the University of Hawaii to develop an essential fish habitat model for the grey jobfish (uku). It uses static variables like depth and substrate type and dynamic variables such as wave height and sea surface temperature that are affected by climate change. This static model supports the Level 1 essential fish habitat definition for uku (presence/absence) (Franklin 2021). A complementary model by the Science Center looks at several climate variables such as the mean, max, and percentiles of sea surface temperature, chlorophyll-a concentration, and sea surface salinity. This modeling effort supports the Level 2 essential fish habitat definition for uku (habitat-related densities are available). Products from these modeling efforts have undergone peer review and are the basis to amend the Hawaii Fishery Ecosystem Plan to revise essential fish habitat for uku around the main Hawaiian Islands.

Caribbean Council

New, island-based fishery management plans were implemented in the Caribbean by NOAA Fisheries in October 2022. They consider various issues including climate change impacts on fisheries and island-specific cultural factors. The island-based plans consider unique cultural factors, market and seafood preferences, fishing gear types, and ecological impacts specific to each island. The island-based regulations replaced the existing Caribbean-wide regulations that were species-based.

NOAA Fisheries’ Atlantic Highly Migratory Species Division

In May 2023, the Atlantic Highly Migratory Species Division conducted a Climate Vulnerability Assessment for 58 managed species and stocks. Fisheries managers, climate policy specialists, and a scientific panel of 15 experts from within NOAA and various academic institutions came together in San Juan, Puerto Rico, for a Climate Vulnerability workshop. NOAA Fisheries uses these assessments to identify which species are most vulnerable to climate change and their sensitivity or adaptability to those changes. Vulnerability in this context refers to how climate-related changes could affect fish species’ productivity or abundance and, to some extent, their distribution. The workshop focused on the evaluation of life history or behavioral characteristics (sensitivity attributes) that influence the vulnerability of highly migratory species (Atlantic sharks, tunas, swordfish, and billfish) to climate change. Participants evaluated the sensitivity of these species to climate change by individually scoring sensitivity attributes, and then discussed the scores and considered new information provided by scientists, regional experts, and observers.

Amendment 12 to the Atlantic HMS Fishery Management Plan charges the Atlantic Highly Migratory Species Management Division to consider ecosystem-based effects and seek to understand the impacts of shifts in the environment, including climate change, on Atlantic HMS fisheries to support and enhance effective fishery management.

The Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act requires a review and updating of essential fish habitat (EFH) fishery management plan components based on new scientific or other relevant information at least once every 5 years. In the last Highly Migratory Species EFH amendment, NOAA Fisheries analyzed the adverse impacts of non-fishing activities—including climate change—on highly migratory species’ essential fish habitat. NOAA Fisheries announced the initiation of the 5-year review process in spring 2022 and later published a Draft 5-Year Review.