Repository for the paper: Managing Forage Fishes in a Changing Climate
Abstract In recent decades, there has been increased recognition of the critical ecosystem services that forage fish provide to aquatic systems. Indeed, the explicit consideration of forage fish is a goal of successful ecosystem-based management approaches. However, the rising impacts of climate change are altering the availability and condition of many forage species and challenging traditional management goals. Therefore, it is critical to understand how the ecological role of forage fish is shifting and what the reasonable expectations are for restoring and adapting aquatic ecosystems. Significant challenges remain in developing reliable and effective management tools given the unique challenges that forage fish bring to science and management including substantial data gaps on basic biology/ecology, poor understanding of trophic interactions, and susceptibility to cumulative impacts from climate and other anthropogenic drivers. This manuscript synthesizes the historical plight of forage fishes, identifies high priority challenges in a changing climate, and identifies future pathways to achieving climate-smart management approaches. We show that environmental and biotic drivers affect juvenile and adult forage fish physiology in complex and unexpected ways. Further, the variability of life-history among species and their responses to climate change necessitates the development of better forecasting models and validation of reliable indicators across spatio-temporal scales. Ecosystem models and other holistic tools have laid the foundation for understanding how environmental conditions and management strategies influence forage fish and predator productivity. However, results are often limited by a lack of data for many forage species. The use of new technologies, such as sonar, eDNA, and saildrones, are promising options to augment sampling of poorly known forage fishes. Recent legislation is taking important steps to protect forage fish, however management and collaboration on local/regional/global levels will be key to setting and achieving climate informed goals.