March Meeting (Zoom) 03/09/2022

Expanding Ocean Food Production Under Climate Change

Ocean fisheries are a critical source of income, food, and nutrition for millions of people around the world but are threatened by climate change. This talk will explain how climate change impacts fisheries and the people who depend on them and talk about the opportunities for mitigating these impacts. Dr. Free will illustrate these impacts and opportunities using the California Dungeness crab fishery, the most lucrative fishery on the West Coast. The fishery is threatened by two dual climate-related threats--fishery closures resulting from harmful algal blooms and increasing entanglements of whales in fishing gear. However, advances in monitoring and management could simultaneously protect whales, public health, and fisher livelihoods.

Dr. Chris Free is a quantitative ecologist in the Research Faculty at UCSB's Bren School of Environmental Science and Management. His research is focused on understanding the impacts of climate change on ocean fisheries and on developing fisheries management strategies that mitigate the impacts of climate change on ecosystems and human livelihoods. His publications include papers in Nature, Science, and the Journal of Applied Ecology. He has a BA in Conservation Biology from Middlebury College and a PhD in Oceanography from Rutgers University.