Marine ecosystems around the North Pacific are changing. Over the past decade physical, chemical, and biological processes have been altered by climate change and anthropogenic impacts. In response, species’ ranges have shifted, disrupting ecosystem goods and services, including fisheries resources upon which communities around the North Pacific depend. Understanding, characterizing and forecasting ecosystem changes will ensure managers and policy makers have the information needed to maintain ecosystem biodiversity, structure and function, and ultimately sustainable utilization of ocean resources. Assessments that use observation-based indicators of ecosystem conditions coupled with numerical models capable of predicting future marine ecosystem conditions at short (seasonal to interannual), medium (decadal) and long-term (multi-decadal) scales can inform management and policy decisions.

We invite submissions related to characterizing and understanding drivers of North Pacific ecosystem change and their impacts to, and resilience of, ecosystem resources and services. Drivers may include but are not limited to climate change, ocean acidification, coastal eutrophication, aquaculture, fishing, pollution, coastal development, non-indigenous species, and cumulative impacts of multiple stressors. Further, it is recognized that there are inherent trade-offs among multiple-use ocean activities, and mechanisms are needed to resolve these to ensure sustainable use of North Pacific resources and ecosystems. Thus, presentations are welcome that address leading indicators of change in exploited resources (i.e., fisheries stocks), non-linear and threshold responses of trophic linkages from phytoplankton to top predators, and approaches integrating monitoring and modeling to forecast ecosystem responses that can inform management and policy options.

Microplastics are now ubiquitous from the near shore to open ocean, from the sea surface to bottom, and from subtropical to polar seas. Relatively high abundance of microplastics has been reported in the North Pacific Gyre as well as coastal waters of North Pacific region among the world oceans. In addition, with decreasing size, they become more bioavailable to small aquatic organisms down to zooplankton. Ingested microplastics have been found in various taxa across trophic levels. Associated chemicals in microplastics may be transferred to an organism upon ingestion. Microplastics represent trans-boundary pollution which can also deliver associated chemicals and invasive organisms to regions far removed from source. Microplastics are increasingly recognized as a potential threat to biota in the ocean. However, because of their size detecting the presence of microplastics and adverse biological effects, if any, becomes considerably more challenging. The objective of this session is to present status and trend information for microplastic pollution and its environmental consequences in the PICES region. Papers are invited that assess microplastics 1) hotspots in the PICES region, 2) sources and input pathways, 3) fate and behaviour of microplastics, 4) role as sink or source of associated toxic chemicals, and 5) biological and ecological effects. Recommendations on how to address growing problems associated with microplastics will be also considered.

PICES SG/WG-CERP is tasked with identifying ecosystem reference points that would integrate across committees to achieve FUTURE goals and missions. This topic review session will examine a) examples of ecosystem reference points that have been established, and b) methodologies for calculating ecosystem reference points from driver-pressure relationships across PICES ecosystems. The goal would be for this topic session to bring together experts from physical, biological, and human dimensions to explore past and future approaches to understand how ecosystem management have and can best set reference points that deal with ecological and societal goals. Reference points for fisheries management are generally determined under a single set of environmental conditions with a single species focus. Almost all forms of resource management rely on reference points in order to manage a species (e.g. BMSY, Potential Biological Removal, Yield per Recruit). However, ecosystem reference points that have been developed have largely focused on additive relationships but more attention is needed on setting reference points in relation to ecosystem functioning such as climatic forcing and predator-prey relationships. One such example, maximum ecosystem yield (MEY) in the Gulf of Alaska and Bering Sea provides an umbrella on total catch, but still does not account for intraspecific dynamics or climate forcing. We propose a topic session that will involve participation from multiple PICES committees and will focus on reviewing examples of ecosystem reference points and methods for defining reference points that have been used internationally. Anticipated outcomes of the session are a report to be distributed to PICES on the summary of the presentations and discussion and a Special issue on “Ecosystem reference points” including a manuscript from WG participants in collaboration with a journal TBD. We anticipate a 1-day topic session with talks focusing on (a) examples of ecosystem reference points, (b) modeling studies examining mechanistic linkages between pressure – driver relationships, and (c) methodological approaches towards identifying reference points.

Adverse impacts on coastal ocean ecosystems by, for example, episodic harmful algal blooms and hypoxic events and by increasing ocean warming and acidification, are prevalent in North Pacific coastal waters. These can occur both in semi-enclosed basins and open coastal areas, and in regions with and without strong anthropogenic impact. These adverse impacts share a common characteristics in that they all involve linked physical, biological, and chemical processes as well as, in some cases, human-related actions. To achieve a complete understanding of these negative impacts on coastal ocean ecosystems requires multi-parameter observations from a variety of in-water platforms. Measurements include those from physical, chemical and biological sensors and from discrete water samples and net tows. Time series are necessary to define the time scale of the impact and the seasonal and interannual conditions present at the time of the impact. These critical in-water measurements are often combined with remotely sensed observations and with numerical models to gain further understanding of the origin and evolution of the negative impacts. We invite contributions that identify adverse impacts on coastal ocean ecosystems in North Pacific coastal waters and that use multi-sensor time series and models to understand and predict these phenomena. Contributions may include the description of multi-parameter coastal ocean observing systems designed to address the causes and evolution of negative impacts on coastal ocean ecosystems. We are particularly interested in studies that address these adverse coastal ocean ecosystem impacts from a transdisciplinary point-of-view.

Under the impacts from climate change and human activities, many stocks were depleted, and habitats were degraded, Stock releasement and artificial reefs construction have been widely used in coastal area for restoring the depleted stocks and conservation of the ecosystem, as well as increasing the abundance for recreational fisheries. This session will focus on the studies of methods, results of the conservation measures and effects on fisheries and ecosystem, aiming at sharing the information of advantages and challenges, evaluating the results and ecological effects and management implications.

PICES has long recognized the importance of climate variability and climate change on marine ecosystems, particularly for multi-decadal scales. However, in fisheries management it is the variability at interannual scale that is of greater immediate interest. This session seeks to explore two aspects of interannual scale variability. First, the mechanisms responsible for year-to-year variability in marine ecosystems including fisheries, so one goal of this session is to encourage presentations that share examples of interannual variability (physics, biology, fisheries) where observations may have provided clues about the responsible mechanisms. A second objective of this session is to engage the climate, ocean and ecosystem modeling communities that are working on interannual to decadal-scales to (1) provide the empirical evidence underlying the assumptions for mechanisms of functional linkages between climate variability and ecosystem response at these temporal scales, (2) to assess the retrospective skill of coupled bio-physical models at multiple temporal scales, and (3) to identify how parameter uncertainty can be transferred from shorter forecasting frameworks to longer term projection models. Presentations on research that provide mechanistic understanding of observed changes through time, and connect interannual variability in oceanographic processes or ecosystem responses to short-term variability and long-term climate change are encouraged.

Biogenic habitats formed by corals, sponges, and other structure-forming taxa support high species abundance and biodiversity, including socio-economically important fishes and invertebrates. These habitats are also known to be vulnerable to disturbances from both human impacts and climate change. Predicting, assessing, and monitoring shifts in habitat-forming species and associated communities in response to natural and anthropogenic forcing require suites of measurable indicators. The goal of this session is to improve our understanding of ecologically relevant, sensitive, observation-based indicators for assessing and monitoring biogenic habitats. We invite presentations on indicators encompassing single or compound metrics of the marine biota in a broad sense (from physiological to species, community and habitat levels) which could be measured to indicate the condition of biogenic habitats and monitor changes to the habitats and communities they support. Empirical studies and literature reviews on indicator development, assessment, and/or application are invited. WG32 members and collaborators will present a literature review of documented functional associations between commercially important fish and invertebrate species and biogenic habitats and address methods to incorporate these associations into indicator development. In line with PICES 2017 theme, this session will help improve our understanding and ability to identify and characterize changes in biogenic habitats, as well as their recovery potential. The results of this session will help inform management and policy decisions and marine spatial planning processes that can maintain ecosystem biodiversity, structure, and function.

Ecosystem-based fisheries management seeks to restore, enhance, and protect living resources, their habitats, and ecological relationships to sustain all fisheries and provide for balanced ecosystems. Progress has been made internationally toward adopting ecosystem based fisheries management of marine systems (EBFM), with PICES countries contributing through regional applications in the North Pacific. Examples are the Study Group on Ecosystem-based management science and its application to the North Pacific (SG-EBM: 2003-2004) and the Working Group on Ecosystem-based management science and its application to the North Pacific (WG-19: 2004-2009). Recent initiatives have expanded the concept of ecosystem to include human influences, both positive and negative, which is emerging as coupled marine social-ecological studies (Marine SES). An integrated understanding of how ecosystem changes affect human social systems and their well-being, and vice versa, are necessary to improve environmental stewardship. The PICES Study Group on Human Dimensions (SG-HD: 2009-2011), Section on Human Dimensions of Marine Systems (S-HD: 2011-), and PICES-MAFF Project on Marine Ecosystem Health and Human Well-being (MarWeB: 2012-2017) have contributed to ecosystem-based management efforts in the North Pacific. Also, cooperation with other international scientific organizations/programs have been developing, such as MSEAS 2016 which was co-sponsored by PICES, ICES, Ifremer, etc. Key questions that structure these scientific activities are: (a) how do marine ecosystems support human well-being and (b) how do human communities support sustainable and productive marine ecosystems? This Topic Session welcomes papers that addresses all aspects of marine socio-ecologic systems, and particularly research that addresses the above two questions.

Mesoscale and submesoscale (~1 to 100 km) currents and fronts such as eddies, streamers, filaments and streaks are ubiquitous features of the ocean. These complex but coherent patterns in the sea surface are often captured by satellite imagery and partially reproduced by high-resolution numerical ocean-circulation/biogeochemical models. While the interior structure of these fine-scale features and its dynamics are still in exploration, it has been well-known that there are tight linkages between physics and distribution of marine organisms at these scales, which includes dispersion, patchiness and aggregations of plankton, nekton, birds and mammals. Understanding the structure and physics of these horizontal fine-scale features, their effects on distribution and production of marine organisms, and how they influence the functioning of the marine ecosystem and its services such as fisheries yield and efficiency is necessary in order to assess likely system changes and shifts under a changing climate. This topic session aims to discuss the interaction between physics, chemistry, biology and fisheries of the ocean at the meso- and sub-mesoscale based on observations and modeling. Presentations will include various levels of organization (physics, biogeochemistry, fish/fisheries and other marine predators) from different areas in the PICES region, and participants will be invited to compare differences and discuss the underlying mechanisms.

‘Forecasting and Understanding Trends, Uncertainty and Responses of North Pacific Marine Ecosystems’ (FUTURE) is an integrative Scientific Program undertaken by the member nations and affiliates of PICES to understand how marine ecosystems in the North Pacific respond to climate change and human activities, to forecast ecosystem status based on a contemporary understanding of how nature functions, and to communicate new insights to its members, governments, stakeholders and the public. While PICES has fostered advances in understanding how environmental and climate variability impacts marine ecosystems, our capacity to forecast these climate-driven impacts, at seasonal to decadal time scales, is less well developed. Similarly, there have been impediments in broadly disseminating results from the FUTURE Science Program in ways that optimize the utilization of the science. In this session, we will provide an assessment of our capacity to forecast climate-driven marine ecosystem changes on seasonal to decadal scales and review strategies for communicating FUTURE and PICES science. Advances in the understanding of climate impacts on marine ecosystems, and a broad dissemination of this information, are essential for preserving a healthy and sustainable North Pacific for FUTURE generations.

Environmental variability in Arctic and Subarctic ecosystems affects the recruitment, abundance, behavior and the seasonal spatial distribution of fish and invertebrate populations which present challenges for fishery management strategies. Understanding environmental driven changes in fish populations can be used to improve predictions of assessed populations and may positively impact recreational fishing, commercial harvest and fishery-dependent coastal communities. This session explores the impacts of environmental variability projections to applied fishery problems in Arctic and Subarctic regions and the development of environmentally enhanced strategies of management.

Prey consumption by mid to upper trophic level marine birds, mammals, and predatory fishes is influenced by changes in prey abundance, prey availability, ocean climate and anthropogenic stressors. However, the extent to which predators can adapt to such changes and still meet their minimum energy requirements is uncertain. Understanding dietary changes of predators under varying environmental conditions is critical to informing prey consumption models and estimating relative contributions of bottom-up vs. top-down forcing in marine systems. Understanding how prey consumption of marine birds, mammals and predatory fishes will respond to climate change is also needed to predict changes in energy flow pathways in ecosystems, and has consequences for conservation initiatives and ensuring the sustainability of commercially important fishery resources. For this session, we request presentations on topics that address (a) the significance of seasonal changes in prey consumption on energy budgets and ecosystem dynamics, (b) the effects of changes in water temperature and other climatic variables on food requirements, (c) relationships between dietary shifts and population trends, (d) the limits of plasticity in prey selection, and (e) how prey consumption of birds, mammals, and predatory fishes is affected by the recent extreme climatic events—the blob, El Nino, ice cover changes, etc.

Anthropogenic activities influence a suite of oceanic properties, including temperature, circulation patterns, and nutrient inputs and distributions. These activities in turn can alter biogeochemical processes and fluxes that influence marine foodwebs and ecosystem services, for example the biologically mediated ocean carbon pumps, fisheries, and other renewable marine resources. These responses of the ocean to changes in anthropogenic forcings will vary with the magnitude and types of impact, ocean region, and foodweb type. The responses may be local or global in scale. Anthropogenic forcing may alter the magnitude and even the direction of services in complex ways, and understanding how marine systems such as carbon pumps will respond to the changing ocean in the anthropocene requires consideration of cumulative effects of multiple activities.

The first step in the carbon pump process is the transfer of atmospheric CO2 into the ocean, where it is taken up by phytoplankton, before organic carbon is synthesized, a portion of which is transferred to pelagic and benthic foodwebs (a regional ecosystem service). Some of the organic carbon can be sequestered in the deep ocean or sediments after being exported from the surface, or by transformation into long-lived dissolved organic compounds (a global ecosystem service). Marine carbon export and sequestration currently makes up about 50% of the anthropogenic CO2 and is hence among the most important earth-ecosystem services provided by the oceans. Biologically mediated carbon cycles also support other important ecosystem services such as aquaculture and fisheries which may also be altered.

This session invites contributions from researchers who use observational, experimental, and modeling approaches to characterize and assess the effects of changing ocean biogeochemical processes and fluxes on the biologically mediated ocean carbon pumps and other ecosystems services, including fisheries and other renewable marine resources. The topic of this proposed theme session addresses the main focus of the joint PICES/ICES Working Group on Climate Change and Biologically-Driven Ocean Carbon Sequestration.

The Biological Oceanography Committee (BIO) has a wide range of interests spanning from molecular to global scales. BIO targets all organisms living in the marine environment including bacteria, phytoplankton, zooplankton, micronekton, benthos and marine birds and mammals. In this session, we welcome all papers on biological aspects of marine science in the PICES region. Contributions from early career scientists are especially encouraged.

Email BIO Paper Session Convenors

This session invites papers addressing general topics in fishery science and fisheries oceanography in the North Pacific and its marginal seas, except those covered by Topic Sessions sponsored by the Fishery Science Committee (FIS).

Email FIS Paper Session Convenors

Papers are invited on all aspects of marine environmental quality research in the North Pacific and its marginal seas, except those covered by Topic Sessions sponsored by the Marine Environmental Quality Committee (MEQ).

Email MEQ Paper Session Convenors

Papers are invited on all aspects of physical oceanography and climate in the North Pacific and its marginal seas, except those covered by Topic Sessions sponsored by the Physical Oceanography and Climate Committee (POC).

Email POC Paper Session Convenors

TBA

The northern Bering Sea is at the confluence of the North Pacific and Arctic Ocean. Physical processes in the northern Bering Sea link currents, productivity regimes, and species distributions and interactions in the North Pacific ecosystems and the Arctic. The processes in this dynamic region influence the state and ecosystem structure in the southern Chukchi Sea as well as flow and advection in the Arctic overall. While the Pacific Arctic Region has received great attention during the past few years, scientific efforts in the Northern Bering – Southern Chukchi Sea region are mostly conducted at the national level. International collaboration and data integration remain limited. This workshop is proposed as the second of two consecutive workshops to bring together researchers representing different scientific programs to synthesize knowledge, share analyses and data, and to discuss further opportunities for cooperation at the international level. The workshop will build on themes addressed in a workshop held at PICES-2016.

The purpose is to:

(1) Inform participants and the greater research community on what is happening in the region. This includes research developments, data access, completed and ongoing analyses, and prospective future activities related to oceanographic and marine fisheries research in the region.
(2) Share results and provide access to past and ongoing analyses (and, if appropriate, share data) to facilitate broader citation of this work, dissemination of results, and collaboration among researchers of various institutional affiliation and national origin.
(3) Provide information on a new data sharing platform and framework and facilitate future research collaboration and sharing of data, publications, and analyses.
(4) Identify opportunities for collaboration (concrete initiatives) as well as discuss opportunities to facilitate data sharing and limitations to data sharing

The format will include invited talks followed by individual researcher reports and discussion on the following themes:
(1) physical environment and chemical fluxes
(2) plankton distribution and dynamics
(3) fish populations and dynamics
(4) recent modeling efforts in the region.

In the afternoon, a presentation will be provided with information on a new data-sharing platform that will allow interested participants to share published manuscripts, completed analyses and data in a password-protected online portal. This is intended to archive relevant information, serve as a contact base and communications system for interested researchers and, where appropriate, to allow researchers to share data and analyses in concrete collaboration across national or institutional lines. This may also serve as a repository for materials that should be translated and shared to broader audiences.

We encourage interested participants to arrive at the workshop prepared to:
(1) list identified publications, reports, and analyses appropriate to the region and available to share
(2) identify new data, new analyses, new participants, and new research to include in this process
(3) strategize specific opportunities for further data integration and coordinated analysis between interested researchers
(4) determine opportunities for collaborative research in the region more broadly

Participants will be asked to identify materials for inclusion in this online sharing portal and to contribute to a discussion on how best to leverage this platform and how to best coordinate collaborative research in the region. Suitable materials might include published analyses and manuscripts, available public data and metadata, and potential new data streams, including satellite observations, glider and mooring data, oceanographic cruise data, bottom, midwater, and surface trawl data, acoustic surveys, and bathymetric and multibeam data.

This workshop aims to increase collaboration and build linkages and synergies among scientists and researchers on both sides of the northern Bering and Chukchi seas as well as among a diverse suite of national and international research efforts operating in this region. Data and results will be integrated with efforts relevant to the PICES-coordinated 2018 North Pacific Ecosystem Status Report. Results will be summarized in a report in PICES Press semi-annual newsletter and, where appropriate, be made available to ongoing research efforts in the region. This workshop is supported by the North Pacific Marine Science Organization (PICES) and North Pacific Research Board (NPRB). The proposed topics of the workshop are relevant to several PICES committees and expert groups including MONITOR, POC, BIO, FIS, TCODE, and S-CCME.

Coastal ecosystem services are the benefits people obtain from the coastal ecosystem. These services include seafood, regulation of climate, reduction of storm impacts, waste assimilation, recreation and leisure, and biodiversity maintenance. The identification, quantification, and valuation of ecosystem services and understanding the impacts of human activities and climate change on ecosystem services are key scientific questions. The ecosystem services-based approach to marine ecosystem management is a new approach meant, in part, to enhance human well-being. The goals of this workshop are: (1) to present research that enhances understanding of the interactions between human activities and ecosystem services; (2) to provide a venue for natural scientists and social scientists to exchange results from research on identification, assessment, management and investment of ecosystem services, and (3) to provide Study Group on Marine Ecosystem Services (SG-MES) members and scientists around the North Pacific an opportunity to discuss collaboration on scientific projects within the North Pacific Ocean. We believe this workshop will contribute to a greater understanding of the status of human dimensions of the North Pacific ecosystem and fill some gaps to achieve the objectives outlined by the FUTURE integrative program.

This workshop will be convened by the Joint PICES-ISC Working Group on Oceanographic Conditions and the Distribution and Productivity of Highly Migratory Fish, as identified in the Working Group’s Terms of Reference. The distribution and productivity of many pelagic fish populations in the North Pacific are determined by large-scale oceanographic processes and climate variability. One hypothesis is that highly migratory species, such as albacore tuna (Thunnus alalungus) or Pacific sardine (Sardinops sagax), have environmental thresholds and preferences that drive their distribution and productivity. This workshop will provide an overview of contemporary research on the topic, including the identification of statistical modeling approaches that link spatially explicit environmental data (e.g., satellite derived SST) to distributional fish data (e.g., fishery-dependent and fishery-independent), methods to assess impacts of climate variability on fish productivity, and examine methods that explicitly incorporate environmentally driven dynamics into stock assessments for highly migratory species. Group discussion will help facilitate identification by the Working Group of a suitable methodology to use to develop habitat models of albacore tuna and other highly migratory species, and to provide possible scenarios for future fishery CPUE ‘hot spots’ and advancement of fish stock assessments. We encourage contributions that deal with common difficulties in relating spatially explicit data to fish distributional data (e.g., zero-inflated data, mismatch between spatial or temporal resolution of oceanographic to distributional datasets).

The PICES 2016 Workshop on toxic Pseudo-nitzschia blooms in the eastern and western Pacific highlighted the stark differences in economic and social impacts of these HABs, and how these effects have been changing over at least the past decade. For example, toxic Pseudo-nitzschia blooms have frequent and intense impacts on fisheries and human health in the eastern Pacific, but have not caused any fisheries closures in the western Pacific, despite the widespread presence of toxigenic species in western Pacific waters. Moreover, in some eastern regions these HABs are increasing in frequency, intensity and duration, but it remains unclear whether these changes are linked to climate pressures. There is a strong need to better identify long-term trends in these and other HAB organisms in the context of climate change pressures in PICES nations. This 1 day workshop will be used to assemble, present, and analyze long-term datasets on HAB organism abundance and impacts from each nation, along with existing time series data of associated environmental parameters. Key country leads will present trends, HAB distribution maps, and oceanographic, meteorological, and linked terrestrial data (e.g., precipitation), including the dynamics of change in these parameters (e.g., pulsed runoff events). Participants will study these trends to identify knowledge gaps, unify methods for data analysis, and propose methods for future data collection to strengthen understanding of climate/HAB linkages. These goals align closely with those of GlobalHAB and NOWPAP, and the International Society for the Study of Harmful Algae (ISSHA), all seeking to strengthen data collection, analysis and communication of findings on climate change and HABs. Representatives from GlobalHAB, NOWPAP and ISSHA will participate in the workshop, both to contribute to the workshop outcome, and to reinforce links with other international partners.

Zooplankton communities occupy a central position in the flow of matter and energy from primary producers to animals at higher trophic levels in marine ecosystems. Over the past two decades, the increasing emphasis on quantitative assessments of marine ecosystem function has been focused on improving our understanding of how marine ecosystems respond to global climate change. Zooplankton (secondary) production represents a quantitative proxy for the functional response of marine ecosystems since it corresponds to the zooplankton biomass accrued through consumption of lower food-web levels. Zooplankton production traditionally has been estimated using methods which either: 1) follow the development of zooplankton populations/communities over the course of several weeks or months (cohort approaches); or 2) employ ex situ fixed-period incubations. Incubation-based techniques with simultaneous sampling of natural communities are the most widely used traditional methods in the field. Recent advances in biochemical methods for measuring zooplankton growth and production, such as quantification of RNA/DNA ratios, chitobiase, or aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases, have been developed and applied to a diverse range of organisms and habitats. This workshop will examine and compare traditional and biochemical approaches to estimating zooplankton secondary production.