Summary Report from Australia’s Heard Island and McDonald Islands Fishery Climate Adaptation Workshop

At the recent SC-CAMLR Workshop on Climate Change (WS-CC-2023), Australia presented a handbook for the adaptation of fisheries management to climate change (‘Adaptation of fisheries management to climate change handbook’ WS-CC-2023/02). The handbook combines adaptive and ecosystem-based management approaches and is designed to guide fisheries managers, scientists and industry through a risk assessment process that can identify feasible options for responding to climate change. WS-CC-2023 noted that the approach provided by this handbook could be used for initial assessments of stocks within CCAMLR, and recommended that the Scientific Committee review this approach for the adaptation of fisheries management to climate change within CCAMLR.  To inform those discussions, this paper provides a summary report of a workshop held in May 2023 which utilised the framework from the handbook to identify risks and potential adaptation responses in the Patagonian toothfish (Dissostichus eleginoides) fishery in Division 58.5.2 around Heard Island and McDonald Islands (HIMI).