Offshore wind (OSW) energy development and climate change jointly threaten the economic
viability of commercial fisheries on the U.S. West Coast. Mitigating the impacts of these dual
stressors will require (1) understanding how they will impact fisheries both individually and
synergistically and (2) identifying, designing, and prioritizing strategies for mitigating the impacts
of both stressors. The proposed research will predict how OSW development and climate
change will impact West Coast fisheries and will identify strategies for mitigating these impacts
on fishing communities. The work will be conducted in five stages. First, we will use literature
review and data synthesis to identify the historical impacts of climate change on West Coast
fisheries. This will serve as a foundation for framing future climate change impacts and
strategies tailored to mitigating the magnitude of these impacts. Second, we will synthesize
fisheries-dependent data from all three West Coast states to map the current distribution of
fishing effort and its coincidence with current and proposed OSW lease areas. This will help to
understand the contemporary impact of OSW development on West Coast fisheries and will
provide a baseline to compare projected shifts in the distribution of fishing grounds under
climate change. Third, we will use species distribution models that are published, under
development, and generated as part of this research to project shifts in species distributions and
fishing grounds under climate change. We will use these projections to estimate the impacts of
climate change on West Coast fishing communities. Fourth, we will use these projections to
examine shifts into and out of OSW lease areas. This will allow us to predict novel OSWfisheries
conflicts that are likely to emerge as a result of climate change. Finally, we will develop
a holistic typology of climate change impacts (e.g., more harmful algal blooms, more fisherieswildlife
conflicts, more drought, new fisheries, etc.) and recommend mitigation strategies tailored
to each of these impact archetypes. We will also provide guidance about how these strategies
might be tactically implemented on the West Coast. One component of generating and vetting
these strategies will be through regional focus groups composed of fishing industry members
and representatives. Collectively, these projects will help BOEM to anticipate the joint impacts of
OSW development and climate change on West Coast fisheries and to identify and prioritize
tractable strategies for mitigating the impacts of these synergistic stressors.