Science Advisory Report 2019/029

Framework for Incorporating Climate-Change Considerations Into Fisheries Stock Assessments

Summary

• 178 DFO stock assessment documents, dating from 2000-2017 and including all taxonomic categories (anadromous, groundfish, invertebrates, pelagic, mammals, and elasmobranchs) from all DFO marine regions, were examined for their inclusion of climate-related material.
• 46% of the stock assessments described hypotheses or broad-scale conceptual linkages between climate, oceanographic or ecological variables and population dynamics. Analytical incorporation of these factors was lower, with quantitative incorporation in 21% and qualitative interpretation in 31% of assessments. Overall, 27% of assessments applied climate, oceanographic or ecological information in the provision of advice. However, these rates are considerably greater than the 2% of stock assessments worldwide which carried information on climate or environmental drivers all the way to tactical management decisions.
• Stock assessments of anadromous fishes, particularly Pacific salmon, consistently had the highest rates of including climate, oceanographic or ecological variables in the analyses, interpretation or provision of advice concerning stock status and forecasts; in contrast, elasmobranchs (sharks and rays) and marine mammals typically had the lowest rates of inclusion.
• Very few, if any, of the stock assessments provided an indication of the overall value of including environmental knowledge on the advice or management outcomes. Science and management would benefit if stock assessments which included climate change information were evaluated to document what difference the inclusion made to the advice, and the consequences.
• A conceptual risk assessment framework (Climate Change Conditioned Advice: CCCA) is proposed to incorporate climate change-related processes into the provision of science advice, with an initial focus on fisheries stock assessment. This framework proposes that conditioning risk-based advice for climate change will facilitate incorporation of climate-change considerations in comparison with directly including climate change variables in an analytical assessment, as these assessments are often limited by uncertainty in, inter alia, understanding the underlying mechanisms.
• This conceptual framework involves determining appropriate climate change-related variables and their appropriate reference periods, developing climate conditioning factors (CCF’s) that are suitable across the range of available data and levels of knowledge and understanding, and is only one approach among several to incorporating climate-change related materials into the provision of science advice.
• The risk-based conceptual framework requires further elaboration and to be applied to select case studies to demonstrate how to develop Climate Change Conditioned Advice (CCCA) across the data-richness and process-knowledge continuum, in particular how to identify appropriate climate, oceanographic and ecological variables, and their appropriate reference or baseline periods.
• Stock exploitation advice would likely be improved (or more robust) if DFO developed an overarching DFO Climate Change Science Strategy, to include climate-change considerations into science advice that informs the delivery of mandated responsibilities. 
• More climate-inclusive advice would also require an implementation strategy that would build upon the Climate Change Science Strategy to provide a systematic approach to implementing climate-change considerations into science advice.
• The meeting advises that additions to DFO stock assessment reports are needed to include climate change-related materials, such as information derived from DFO Ecosystem Status reporting processes to provide the contextual background information to understand climate impacts on science advice and stock assessments, and to state whether, what, and how climate change information/processes were considered in that assessment. Data and knowledge gaps preventing the consideration of climate change information/processes in the assessment should also be clearly identified.
• Multi-year to decadal climate and ocean projections at appropriate spatial scales are necessary if CCCA are to be possible. These are currently not available for Canadian waters.

This Science Advisory Report is from the May 8-9, 2018 meeting titled Framework for Incorporating Climate Change Considerations into Fisheries Stock Assessment. Additional publications from this meeting will be posted on the Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) Science Advisory Schedule as they become available.

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