Wednesday, August 24, 2016

Wakefield Fisheries Symposium Will Focus on Climate Change

The 31st Wakefield Fisheries Symposium, set for May 9-12, 2017 in Anchorage, will focus on impacts of the environment on dynamics of Arctic and subarctic species of commercial, subsistence and ecological importance.

Hans-Otto Portner of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Germany is to be the keynote speaker, Alaska Sea Grant officials said.

Portner heads the Integrative Ecophysiology group at the Institute and was the coordinating lead author of the Ocean Systems chapter of the fifth climate change impact assessment report for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate change.

The symposium will focus on effects of warming, loss of sea ice, ocean acidification, and oceanographic variability on the distribution, phenology, life history, population dynamics, and interactions of these species, and how a better understanding can inform management of fish and invertebrates in a changing ocean to benefit affected communities, Sea Grant officials said.

Co-chairs of the symposium steering are Franz Mueter, of the University of Alaska Fairbanks School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences, and Anne Hollowed, of the NOAA Alaska Fisheries Science Center. Also invited to speak are Anna Neuheimer, University of Hawaii; Christian Mollmann, University of Hamburg; Brad Seibel, University of South Florida; Charles Stock, NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, and Kathy Mills, Gulf of Maine Research Institute.

The Alaska Sea Grant College Program coordinates and sponsors the symposium in partnership with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, National Marine Fisheries Service, and North Pacific Fishery Management Council.

More information is online at www.seagrant.uaf.edu/conferences/2017/wakefield-fish-dynamics/.

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