Speaker: Jess Hopf, Research Associate, Ecological Modelling & Population Dynamics, HMSC, Oregon State University

Topic: MARINE RESERVE NETWORKS IN A CHANGING CLIMATE

In the last decade, multiple reserves have been established along the U.S. Pacific coast, and evaluations of those reserve systems are underway. Concurrently, the Pacific coast has experienced multiple extreme events, including heatwaves, hypoxic events, and pathogen outbreaks. These events are expected to worsen with climate change, raising two key questions for marine reserve monitoring and management: 1) what roles can reserves play in mitigating the effects of climate change? and 2) how do extreme events impact our ability to assess reserve success? In this talk, I’ll briefly discuss some long-term expectations of reserves and show how marine reserves can help stabilise fish biomass and fishery yields, but only if located in the right areas. Critical to current monitoring and management actions, I’ll focus on our current knowledge of short-term impacts and show how natural environmental variability and extreme events can negatively affect our ability to detect reserve effects, sometimes delaying our ability to see positive biomass build-up for decades. Come join us to take a trip from Oregon to Australia and learn more about how fish population models can save the marine world, maybe.