California’s fisheries are already grappling with the effects of climate change-induced impacts, from species movements to fisheries closures to productivity loss. The success of California’s climate-ready fisheries management strategies is dependent on the extent to which managers and decision-makers can proactively mitigate, adapt, or respond.

On topics ranging from aquaculture growers’ adaptive capacity, to ocean acidification, to innovations in state and federal fishery policy permitting, to learning from urchin fishery collapse, OST is building academic partnerships and mobilizing research support to accelerate forward-looking science that will equip fishery managers with strategies and approaches to respond to sudden, high-impact, climate-driven emergencies when they are most needed.

In the coming years, we will pursue opportunities to ground cutting-edge research on fishery insurance with the needs and interest of state regulators and coastal fishing communities. We will explore how our mandate to pursue technology innovations can be activated to support fishery data modernization efforts that increase California’s ability to detect and respond to climate-induced impacts.