Cooperating with the environment: Case studies of climate and fisheries in the Northern California Current

Global change is expected to have real and substantial consequences on marine fisheries and ecosystems, and these impacts will interact in unknown and unpredictable ways with ongoing stresses on these resources. The nature of how humans adapt and respond to such changes will likewise have major consequences to the health and sustainability of marine ecosystems, yet we have little guidance with regard to policies or management measures that might be appropriate for coping with future changes. This paper presents case studies of selected fisheries in the Northern California Current Ecosystem (NCCE), a transition environment highly sensitive to environmental forcing on multiple time scales. The fisheries discussed include Oregon coastal coho salmon, canary rockfish, Pacific hake, Pacific sardine, Dungeness crab and pandalid shrimp. The implications of fisheries investigations and management decisions provide insights into the means by which these stocks both buffer against and respond to the combined forces of environment and fishing. As the fisheries that we examine here respond in different ways to highly similar environmental forcing, these case studies suggest that successful management requires the protection of each stock's strategy for coping with environmental change. Because future global change may result in considerably greater stresses to marine populations and ecosystems, an ecosystem-based approach for managing marine fisheries will become increasingly necessary as the interactions between stocks and their environment become clearer.