From November 2 to 13, the North Pacific Marine Science Organization (PICES) held their annual meeting in San Diego, USA. The meeting celebrated the 25th anniversary of PICES with the theme of looking at the past 25 years and imagining the next 25. Some of the topics of interest included coastal ecosystem stressors, loss or changes of marine biodiversity, changing productivity and species distributions in response to climate change, developing outlooks or forecasts of future ocean ecosystems, and examining climate change impacts on ocean ecosystems and human society.

Nereus Alumnus Ryan Rykaczewski, University of South Carolina, was the keynote speaker, discussing “Projecting ecosystem consequences of climate variability and change: Aspirations for the next 25 years of PICES” and also presenting on “Wind stress, stratification, and source waters: How will eastern boundary current upwelling processes respond to climate change?”Principal Investigator Charles Stock, NOAA, presented “Trophodynamic drivers of global fisheries catch” and Alumnus Kelly Kearney presented “A comparison of Bering Sea ecosystem energy pathways in warm versus cold years”.

Nereus Fellow at Princeton Colleen Petrik gave a plenary talk entitled “The Response of Fisheries Production to Natural and Anthropogenic Forcing: Past, Present and Future”. The talk presented a mechanistic model to represent immature and mature stages of forage fishes, large pelagic fishes, and large demersal fishes, as well as preliminary of fish biomass under (1) pristine non-anthropogenic historical forcing (no anthropogenic CO2, no fishing), (2) historical climate without fishing, (3) historical climate with fishing, (4) and projected business-as-usual climate and fishing.

Research Associate Tyler Eddy, UBC, attended the ICES/PICES SICCME working group workshop, representing Nereus and FISH-MIP.