This 6 page summary of the issues surrounding fisheries and climate change, "Fisheries and aquaculture in our changing climate ", was prepared as the consensus opinion of 20 agencies in preparation for the UN Climate talks in Copenhagen in 2009. It discusses the link between traditional human impacts on the marine environment, such as habitat destruction to the approaches needed when addressing climate change impacts and adaptation in fisheries. Unusually, it includes gender issues in fishing folk communities and the importance of strategic investment.

This detailed report, "Enhancing the resilience of inland fisheries and aquaculture systems to climate change", is interesting because it explores inland (freshwater) fisheries in wetland and arid areas, particularly in Africa. It examines the relationship between the need for adaptation of inland fisheries to climate change and the development of supportive governance structures.

Vulnerability of national economies to the impacts of climate change on fisheries

This 4 side note, "Fisheries and aquaculture can provide solutions to cope with climate change", holds may useful ideas and advises that aquaculture is an important means of diversifying and improving the productivity of farming systems and for improving food security in many regions, especially in Africa and Asia.

This short briefing document by the World Fish Centre, "The threat to fisheries and aquaculture from climate change", is very useful with some informative maps and tables of summary information on the impacts of climate change on capture fisheries and aquaculture both in marine and freshwater environments. For example, it reports that Lake Tanganyika provides 25-40% of animal protein for the countries which surround it and that temperature driven stratification has reduced planktivorous fish productivity by an estimated 30%. The key messages from the report are below.

This early and comprehensive report, "Vulnerability Assessment of the North East Atlantic to Climate Change", by Trevor Baker in 2005, covers the impacts of climate change on all bio-physical parameters of the NE Atlantic. The report identifies the how the effects of changes at the base of the food chain can knock on to impact top predators. Critically, it assesses how impacts can cause the links between different parts of the marine food chain to become strained or broken (trophic mismatch).

The Marine Climate Impacts Partnership publishes an annual report card with information about the impacts of climate change on a wide range of aspects of the marine ecosystem including on fish and fisheries communities. It is written by leading UK marine and climate scientists and undergoes a peer review process. The report card is a summary of more detailed backing documents which are available on line. 2010-2011’s report has some key findings in relation to fish and fisheries.