Overview of the Session: Understanding and Responding to Climate Change Impacts on Marine and Coastal Fisheries

Diverse climate changes are impacting marine ecosystems and the living marine resources (LMRs), human communities and economies that depend on them.   Increasing ocean temperatures, changes in ocean currents, losses of sea ice, rising sea levels, and ocean acidification have already been implicated in shifts in species distribution, abundance, and phenology of living marine resources.  Climate projections suggest that these impacts may increase in the future with continued changes in the global climate system.   This presentation will review several major efforts at national and regional scales (e.g., National Fish Wildlife and Plant Climate Adaptation Strategy, National Ocean Council Ocean and Coastal Climate Adaptation Plan) to develop strategies and tools to better assess, predict and incorporate climate impacts into management of the nation’s valuable marine and coastal living marine resources.