Ecosystems in the North Pacific have been significantly impacted by climate change and human activities. For over 30 years, PICES has established an international scientific network and conducted numerous projects to enhance our understanding of how North Pacific ecosystems respond to such impacts. However, with the recent intensification of climate change and the increase in unpredictable extreme events, previously held understandings may no longer be valid. There is a pressing need for discussions on integrating the latest scientific findings and technologies (e.g., artificial intelligence, remote sensing, biotechnology) by experts from diverse fields, including marine science, environmental conservation, engineering, economics, and social science. Equally important is the collaboration with local fishing communities, policymakers, NGOs, and other stakeholders to explore practical applications of scientific knowledge. PICES-2025 will serve as a crucial platform for exploring innovative approaches to understanding North Pacific ecosystems, helping to chart a path toward climate resilience and sustainable development. Contributions from experienced specialists, as well as groundbreaking ideas from Early and mid-Career Ocean Professionals, are highly encouraged.

Under global change, warmer temperatures, deoxygenation/hypoxia, acidification, eutrophication, and sea level rise are impacting marine ecosystems. In addition, extreme events such as marine heatwaves, flooding/droughts, tropical storms etc. are occurring more frequently and with stronger amplitudes. These forcings, individually or in combination, influence the geographic distribution, phenology, and growth of marine biota in species-dependent ways that should result in ecosystem structural change through linear or nonlinear processes. Improved understanding of the current and future impacts of multiple pressures on marine ecosystems is needed, particularly, the mechanisms and linkages, data products, mitigation strategies, and linkages with societal needs. However, it is difficult to monitor the entire structure and energy-flow through food webs to detect these changes. New technologies and tools are needed to better understand impacts of multiple and cumulative pressures on ecosystem structure and function. Advances in tools and technologies that improve ecosystem monitoring including, but not limited to: automated environmental DNA and RNA systems, which seamlessly capture ecosystem structure from viruses to marine mammals; advanced optical sensors; machine learning algorithms; and artificial intelligence applications that can analyse limited time-series data or model shifts in species distributions, energy flows or phenology. In addition, predictive modeling tools are emerging to forecast future ecosystem changes, while socio-ecological assessment methods are needed to understand the broader impacts on fisheries, communities, and ecosystem services.

This session aims to assess and discuss the changing marine ecosystem in terms of societal needs as well as all aspects of marine science (physical, chemical, biological oceanography and fishery science), including: describing the current state of knowledge of marine ecosystem structural change under ongoing climate change using advanced tools and technologies; assessing the potential to predict future structural change, consequences of marine ecosystem change, and socio-ecological needs; linking marine science to societal needs; and identifying knowledge gaps. One day of the session will focus on presentations that cover integrative marine science approaches in the Asian Marginal Seas. For the second day, we welcome talks from all regions of the North Pacific. The session outcome should clarify a vision of international comprehensive marine research for the UN Ocean Decade that meets current societal needs.

Climate change is disrupting our perception of relationships between large-scale climate and marine ecosystems. For example, over the past decade, a signature of basin-wide warming has confused long-standing correlations between North Pacific variability (e.g., the PDO) and regional temperatures. This disconnect is forcing us to re-evaluate the nature of historical climate-ecosystem relationships, and the relative importance of absolute temperature vs other climate processes in driving ecosystem change.Variability occurring on top of long-term trends will increasingly push environmental conditions into novel territory, but the frequency and severity of resulting impacts will depend on whether those impacts are tied to absolute thresholds, to the rate of change, or to some interaction between short-term disturbances and the background conditions on which they occur. Teasing apart the roles of variability and long-term change is increasingly important as we aim to project the fate of marine ecosystems under future anthropogenic forcing.

In this session we invite contributions related to interactions between variability and long-term change in the North Pacific, particularly the relative and combined effects of transient events and secular trends. We welcome work on the physical climate system, chemistry, biology, and ecological and socioeconomic responses.

Forage communities including small pelagic fish and squid are key components that link plankton and predators in marine food webs. These species exhibit large fluctuations in abundance and the dominant species can alternate from one dominant species to another with changing environmental variables. Previous hypotheses, however, may not explain responses of small pelagic fish communities to the recent climate phases including marine heat waves and unconventional regimes. Understanding the mechanisms of the population fluctuations and main drivers of the variability is essential to fill the gap of ecological knowledge on their critical role as consumers of plankton and the main prey for predators, and to develop strategies for sustainable use of small pelagic fish species.

We welcome contributions that investigate the drivers of recent dynamics, including the impacts of climate change, on small pelagic fish communities. We also welcome studies contributing to enhancing knowledge of the role of small pelagic fish on trophic webs, including modelling approaches that aim at better prediction of the response of small pelagic fish communities to environmental changes. New advances in the assessment and monitoring of small pelagic fish species that aim towards obtaining more accurate and efficient data are welcome, as well as advances of small pelagic fish species assessment, particularly those integrating Ecosystem-Based Fisheries Management. Finally, studies on the socio-economic impacts of small pelagic fish communities are also encouraged, including methodological advances in integrated biological-economic models, and models of fishing community response and adaptation to climate.

Over the past several decades, extreme climate events (ECEs) have caused devastating and long-lasting ecological and socio-economic impacts on both global and regional scales. ECEs include both extreme physical conditions (e.g., marine heatwaves) as well as biogeochemical extremes (e.g., ocean acidification, deoxygenation, harmful algal blooms, coral bleaching). Although the episodic nature of these events may be due to natural causes, their extreme character is exacerbated by the changing background conditions associated with global warming. These events affect marine ecosystems at all trophic levels mainly through shifts in habitat distribution, biodiversity, and communities, resulting in the destruction of coastal biogenic habitats. A deepened understanding of the complexity of these impacts, which may unfold over time, is needed, requiring continued analyses of the conditions that followed past events.

Since mid-2023, the Earth’s climate has exhibited exceptional heating conditions, which can truly be called "global boiling.” Among the world's oceans, the highest sea surface temperature anomalies have occurred in the Kuroshio-Oyashio region, with anomalies extending from the East Asian marginal seas to the central North Pacific across the International Dateline. Understanding these unprecedented recent conditions in terms of natural processes and/or anthropogenically-forced warming, is of paramount importance for the PICES community.

To advance prediction efforts, updated statistical characterizations of ECEs (e.g., in terms of intensity, frequency, duration, and three-dimensional evolution) are needed, together with a more accurate identification of their driving mechanisms, both local and remote, natural or anthropogenic. Improved characterization and understanding of compound events, i.e., the co-occurrence of different types of physical and/or biogeochemical extremes, are also needed.

This session intends to provide a platform to compare and contrast the processes underpinning the development of physical/biogeochemical ECEs across different Pacific regions.

In this session, we welcome contributions on ECEs and related compound events on the following topics: 1) Physical and biogeochemical processes associated with extreme events in the Pacific, 2) Subsurface events and their relationship with surface ECEs, and 3) Prediction and projection of extremes. Studies focusing on recent physical or biogeochemical extremes are especially welcome.

Stock assessments are an essential part of sustainable fisheries management, using models to represent fishing and biological processes such as recruitment, growth, natural mortality, and selectivity, to evaluate the current state of the population (e.g., how much is in the population now), what is likely to be there in the near future, and how best to harvest it without imperiling future reproductive success and yield. Growing evidence suggests that changing environmental conditions can cause variations in population processes which violate the assumptions of stationarity often relied on in traditional stock assessment methods. However, to date, very few stock assessments globally have been able to successfully integrate environmental and ecological impacts into their population models, despite the flurry of research on the topic. This session provides a forum to summarize and discuss the current practices and challenges of assessing fish stocks in changing environments from experts around the world, consider the impact changing environmental conditions have on the reliability of management advice from stock assessment models, present emerging developments, and discuss what’s needed to increase uptake of environmental information in stock assessments and advice moving forward.

Sustainable fisheries require a better understanding the responses of oceanographic processes and ecosystems to climate change and anthropogenic forcing. In the PICES regions, high fisheries production appears around the eastern and western boundary currents. In recent years, there has been increasing evidence that various environmental conditions specific to these boundary currents (e.g., meandering, frontal eddy, turbulent mixing, island mass effect) stimulate biological production. Such oceanographic features might foster high fisheries production, however, we still have little knowledge of how fisheries stocks are influenced by varying ecosystem-level responses.

This session will share and review new information for understanding how oceanographic processes affect fisheries stocks through lower trophic levels of ecosystems in boundary current systems. In particular, we encourage presentations and discussions using experimental, observational, and modeling approaches linking oceanographic and ecosystem-level processes to fisheries recruitment and productivity. This session will generate key questions about regime shifts in fishery stock fluctuations and stimulate fruitful debates to solve them through international collaborations.

Climate change significantly affects ocean ecosystems, altering species distributions and abundance, which disrupts food webs and trophic interactions. This can impact prey availability and population viability, highlighting the need for ecosystem-based management in marine species and fisheries, especially given the large scales at which climate change processes operate. Species like Pacific saury, tuna, Pacific herring and salmon, which migrate across multiple jurisdictional boundaries, and play important roles in North Pacific food webs, face additional management challenges. Coordinated international efforts are necessary to align research and management with the larger scales at which transboundary species, fisheries, and climate processes are distributed.

Integrating broad ecosystem-scale information into management or conservation decisions is inconsistent across the North Pacific, with gaps and bright spots evident. While efforts to understand climate change impacts on marine species at broader scales are increasing — using tools like ecosystem models, agent- or individual-based models, species distribution models, cumulative impact and climate vulnerability assessments — there is a need to better connect this research with decisions, particularly for transboundary species.

This session will feature representatives from member nations discussing current ecosystem-scale research on climate impacts in the Pacific. We invite experts, managers, and stakeholders to share their experiences, challenges, and successes in integrating scientific ecosystem-scale knowledge into decision making for fisheries, conservation, and other sectors. Roundtable discussions will follow each presentation block to review the state of ecosystem-scale research in the North Pacific and identify key needs for translating this research into actionable management advice under climate change.

The goal is to highlight ongoing ecosystem-scale research on transboundary species, and identify some of the tools, information, and approaches that have been most effective for informing climate change impacts and relevant decisions in the region.

This session will be convened by ECOPs across the North Pacific, and builds on ecosystem modelling discussions from the PICES-2024 workshop on 'North Pacific ecosystem model ensembles', addresses S-CCME terms of reference and will contribute to outputs of the proposed PICES-2025 workshop on 'climate-ready fisheries management'.

Marine plastic and microplastic are top pollutants of concern under Sustainable Developmental Goal 14 “Life Below Water” and the first challenge in the UN Decade of Ocean Science program. With fast-developing technology and research, our understanding of the status and impacts of marine plastic and microplastic pollution is advancing quickly. Since the North Pacific and its marginal seas are known to be more contaminated by meso- and microplastics than many other regions, research conducted in this region will enable us to better evaluate and assess the potential impacts of marine plastic and microplastic pollution on the ecosystem. This session welcomes any research related to the advances in monitoring, modeling, assessment, policy, and trend analysis on marine plastic and microplastic pollution. We are also interested in the future effects of the UN Plastic Treaty, which are in the final stages of negotiation. In addition, we welcome researchers who wish to build on the PICES plastic pollution community and better support the UN Ocean Decade on this important issue.

Marine ecosystems are shaped and modulated by a wide range of oceanic phenomena, at scales ranging from millimeters to 10,000 kilometers of oceanic gyres, so predicting climate-driven changes requires research across multiple spatiotemporal scales and disciplines. Rapid increase in innovative, machine learning tools can provide new insights into multiscale and multidisciplinary interactions in the ocean. These technological advances have also helped to project climate-driven changes in marine ecosystems, some of which are already being observed and expected to be greatly magnified by the end of the century. Changes in regional wind patterns, surface stratification, marine heat waves, and seasonal phenologies are combining to alter oceanographic conditions, with associated impacts on marine biogeochemistry, ecology, and fisheries in ways that threaten ecosystem services and indigenous and cultural traditions. These changes are tightly linked to multiscale-multidisciplinary processes that include, among others, gyre-scale nutrient streams; meso- and submesoscale eddies and fronts impacts on air-sea interaction, plankton and fisheries; meso- and submesoscale eddy induced upwelling, subduction and lateral transport of biogeochemical tracers; submesoscale instabilities in the boundary layers and associated microscale turbulence, near-inertial waves and internal tides that influence the mixing and distributions of marine ecosystem properties. Machine learning tools not only facilitate the study of the multiscale-multidisciplinary oceanic processes, but are well suited for application to fisheries and climate change. Marine-based carbon dioxide removal (mCDR) is being considered for both nearshore and offshore environments to help mitigate the impact of climate change. Although exploratory thus far, implementation of mCDR strategies would lead to unique alterations of future ocean conditions; a topic ripe for machine learning tools. This session invites all contributions from experimental, observational, numerical, and theoretical research relating to multiscale-multidisciplinary oceanic processes influenced by climate change, as well as those exploring new tools such as mCDR and that adopt machine learning initiatives. We also welcome submissions delving on the practical implementation of measures that are based on scientific and indigenous knowledge to help build a better multiscale-multidisciplinary understanding of marine ecosystems.

The challenges facing successful management of North Pacific marine fisheries are intensifying under rapidly changing climate and ocean conditions. Understanding the drivers of recruitment variability has become vital for sustainable fisheries management because small changes in early survival translate to large fluctuations in recruitment. By studying how survival during the early life stages (eggs, larvae, and juveniles) responds to environmental change, we can elucidate the mechanisms underlying adult population dynamics. However, while early survival is known to be strongly affected by environmental conditions, novel oceanographic conditions magnified by climate change are causing unexpected responses in fish populations (i.e., altered mortality, phenology, distribution, growth, and diet). The aim of this session is to explore the factors influencing the early life stages of North Pacific fishes in response to present and future climate variability. We welcome abstract submissions for research that applies emerging (e.g., in situ imaging, artificial intelligence, eDNA) and/or established (e.g., stable isotopes, otolith microchemistry and microstructure, nutrition, diet analyses, biophysical modeling) approaches to enhance our ability to study the complex early life histories of fishes. By integrating a combination of methods, researchers can gain a more comprehensive understanding of the factors influencing fish early life stages and their implications for recruitment variability to improve the resiliency of fisheries management in a rapidly changing North Pacific ecosystem. All 4 conveners are Early Career Ocean Professionals (ECOP).

Forage species (invertebrate micronekton, squid, small pelagic fish, and juvenile/age-0 piscivorous fish) are a critical linkage between plankton production and upper trophic levels (piscivorous fish, seabirds, and marine mammals). “Bottom-up” processes affecting forage species can affect the distribution, productivity, and survival of upper trophic level species. “Top-down” predation pressure can also affect forage species, and ultimately the structure, function, and resiliency of North Pacific ecosystems. Characterizing and quantifying these linkages is critical to ensuring human food security, conserving robust predator populations, developing innovative approaches to reduce human-predator conflicts, and enacting effective ecosystem-based management. Identifying when these linkages are weakened or broken may allow for early warning of ecosystem state shifts and loss of ecosystem services.
We invite observational and modeling studies concerning linkages in the dynamics of forage and predator species. These include, but are not limited to:

• Observed relationships between forage and predator time-series of biomass, survival, or productivity metrics;
• Investigations into top-down controls by predators upon forage species and bottom-up controls by forage species upon predators;
• Investigations of the effects of environmental variability, extreme events, and climate change on species distributions, phenologies, habitat compression or expansion, and habitat overlap leading to changes in encounters between predator and forage populations;
• Studies of shifts in available forage and diets among predator species and competition between predators; and
• Studies of the effects of forage quality on upper trophic level productivity and survival.

“To address our climate emergency, we must rapidly, radically reshape society. We need every solution and every solver.”- Ayana Elizabeth Johnson & Katharine Wilkinson, All We Can Save.

In 2024, a series of authors from US federal science agencies (NOAA Fisheries, NASA, EPA) led by Openscapes wrote a paper on how an Open Science and Open Data cultural shift is needed to bring ‘all hands on deck’ to accelerate collaboration and innovation to solve pressing issues presented by rapid ocean climate change. This session will explore how Open Science and embracing data and code collaboration activities helps accelerate research and innovation essential to respond to changes in the ocean environment.

NOAA Fisheries is investing $34M in data modernization, workforce development, in part through Open Science. What exactly are they doing, and why? We’ll share stories of how Open Data accelerates science advice for internal teams, stakeholder groups, and far beyond (since it is openly available to all). Speakers will share their stories to help show what is possible when teams and agencies embrace sharing of data and code with an eye towards re-use and interoperability. Further, speakers will share how their teams started making this transition to Open Science by building trust and skills along with their new collaborative workflows.

In science, reshaping requires formidable technical (cloud, coding, reproducibility) and cultural shifts (mindsets, hybrid collaboration, inclusion). This session will present speakers from across government agencies and academia that are exploring better and more efficient ways of working and not being too entrenched in our bureaucracies to do better science, support colleagues, and change the culture at our organizations. We share much-needed success stories and action for what we can all do to reshape science.

Coastal oceans are global hotspots for marine productivity and biodiversity that have supported human subsistence, industry, culture and social systems for millennia, into the present day. Contributing to this socio-ecological richness is land-ocean connectivity, where freshwater and nutrients enhance coastal productivity and create a tapestry of coastal habitat. However, among marine environments, coastal oceans are also uniquely vulnerable to anthropogenic disturbance. Approximately 40% of the global human population lives within 100 km proximity of coasts, and many of our largest cities are located at the land-ocean interface. Urbanization is a pervasive form of land use change that has wide ranging expressions, including shoreline modification, pollution, changes to freshwater runoff, and the quantity and quality of material flux to the ocean. These changes can disrupt critical land-ocean linkages and processes, and the socio-ecological systems that they support, solutions for which can only occur through a holistic understanding of the dynamic interplay between cities and their adjacent oceans. For this session, we welcome presentations that address the ecology of urban oceans; how urban associated stressors and activities shape coastal ocean ecosystems (habitat, species to communities, direct and cumulative effects); the ecosystem services provided by oceans to cities; pathways to resilient and sustainable urban oceans, including monitoring strategies, metrics and indicators of ocean health that can inform benchmarks and restoration; approaches to connecting science to decision making and policy; and the interplay of all of these with climate change. We encourage presentations representing different knowledge types, stakeholders and rightsholders.

This session will build off research conducted by the Human Dimensions Committee which explored research conducted in PICES from 1992-present to understand program and expert group networks and connections to ocean science and management for the UN Ocean Decade (Takemura et al. submitted). This earlier work explored bibliometric and text analyses to innovate and integrate the human dimensions in ocean science in novel ways. This session expands on this work by seeking to identify growth and challenges of bibliometric methodologies (including text, content, network analysis), and highlight examples of interdisciplinarity and the co-production of knowledge in support of ocean sustainability using these methods. We will engage researchers from various disciplines to share developments and mobilize knowledge across disciplines, particularly related to the ocean sciences and resource management. Invited speakers and participants from a wide range of fields of study will share novel research that converges on vexing problems in ocean science and management. A structured discussion will be incorporated in the session to allow time for the community of practice to exchange ideas. The session will be conducted in collaboration with ICES’ Science Impact and Publications Group to explore opportunities to expand research activities with ICES via PICES’ Working Group 51.

Understanding carbon cycling in the North Pacific and its marginal seas is critical for elucidating past ocean dynamics, assessing regional impacts of environmental changes, and predicting future alterations due to global warming. Radiocarbon (¹⁴C) serves as an intriguing tracer for deciphering carbon cycling in the ocean.

This topic session invites papers addressing: 1) studies on modern and geological time scale studies; 2) studies of particulate and/or dissolved carbon studies; 3) marine, freshwater, and groundwater systems in the North Pacific and its marginal seas; and 4) any new experimental, modeling, statistical approaches to radiocarbon analysis.

Our session conveners include three members who are ECOPS, with Minkyoung Kim (the corresponding convenor) serving as co-chair of AP-ECOP and AP-CREAMS. This session aims to 1) bring together researchers who are interested in using radiocarbon to understand the ocean carbon cycling and the multiple factors that determine the distribution and preservation of carbon in the ocean; and 2) expand our networks for future collaborations under the PICES umbrella.

Additionally, this session will contribute to the FUTURE and POC initiatives, enhancing our understanding of the PICES region's response to climate change. Presenters will be encouraged to connect their work with all participants and PICES expert groups. If there is sufficient interest, we plan to organize a synthesis paper on radiocarbon studies in the North Pacific and its marginal seas.

Karenia blooms have caused major economic and human impacts in western Pacific regions over the past few decades. Although they have been largely absent along eastern Pacific shores, several Karenia blooms recently have appeared there, raising questions about whether an expansion of their common range is underway. The underlying drivers of bloom development still are unknown, though they clearly are linked to warm and stratified surface waters. There is concern then that climate-driven increasing ocean temperatures and stratification are leading conditions to become more favorable for Karenia bloom development, especially at higher latitudes. This warming may have contributed to Karenia blooms recently appearing along eastern Pacific shores. Given that another common HAB species—Heterosigma akashiwo—shares many characteristics with Karenia spp., including motility (i.e., the ability to maximize light and nutrient availability), cyst formation and mixotrophy, it is particularly important to understand how these traits may contribute to Karenia spp. success over other phytoplankton under warming conditions. Accelerating our understanding of the potential trends in Karenia bloom expansion and intensification will hinge upon collaborative research, new monitoring approaches, and initiatives. We seek to begin this enhanced effort by welcoming presentations on the findings from laboratory, field and monitoring studies, along with the perspectives they generate, of Karenia blooms in both the Pacific region and elsewhere. Through intercomparison of these observations and ideas we hope to gain critical insights into the underlying mechanisms driving these blooms, and thereby help us address the environmental challenges posed by Karenia blooms in the North Pacific.

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

This session invites papers addressing the promotion, coordination, integration and synthesis of research activities related to the contribution of the social sciences to marine science, and to facilitate discussion among researchers from both the natural and social sciences. We invite abstract submissions on any of these topics.

Email HD 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

Building networks to share knowledge and capacity is essential to understand, forecast, manage, and adapt to climate-driven changes in marine ecosystems and their associated fisheries. The UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (Ocean Decade; 2021-2030) provides a unique opportunity to convene global partners to address challenges associated with climate change, marine ecosystem health, and food security. The Ocean Decade Programme ‘Sustainability of Marine Ecosystems Through Global Knowledge Networks’ (SMARTNET), jointly sponsored by PICES and ICES, works with S-CCME and other Programmes to advance the ‘climate-fisheries’ nexus within the Ocean Decade. In this workshop, we will explore decision support tools needed to implement effective fisheries management and adaptation strategies in a changing climate. We invite a broad array of participants, across international and management organizations, to: (1) explore the various mechanisms used to integrate environmental information into ecosystem-based fisheries management; and (2) review the existing tools/systems, gaps and pathways forward for climate-ready fisheries management (including data streams, models, information infrastructure, communication avenues, co-development practices, governance frameworks). This workshop will build upon the PICES-2024 workshop on the ‘science-policy interface’ and the ICES-2025 theme session on ‘climate-ready fisheries’. An outcome of this Workshop will be a white paper outlining effective strategies for supporting international climate-ready fisheries management.

North Pacific zooplankton time series provide early and rapid biological indicators of response to climate-ocean variability and extreme events (e.g. marine heatwaves) occurring with increasing frequency. This practical workshop seeks to explore zooplankton time series of biomass and/or abundance of indicator species or groupings in each PICES region. The intent is to facilitate regional inter-comparison of zooplankton time series by identifying common indicators useful at broader scales relevant to the North Pacific. We propose a one-day workshop divided into: 1) an invited talk by Todd O’Brien (NOAA) providing an introduction and overview of the time-series tools on the COPEPODITE website (https://www.st.nmfs.noaa.gov/copepodite); 2) contributed talks representing zooplankton time series from as many PICES regions as possible; 3) a hands-on portion inviting participants to bring and standardize their data set using the COPEPODITE website tools, for which the invited speaker will be on hand to help participants use the tools; 4) initial inter-comparisons of patterns among time-series. The goal will be to examine if similar patterns in zooplankton time-series are found across PICES regions and across climate events. Standardized data could be placed in a shared drive and analyses done by participants for a future session/workshop. This workshop will lay the foundation for formation of a North Pacific zooplankton time series expert group in the near future

Ecological monitoring of the Pacific Arctic conducted over the past decades has shed light on the impacts of climate change driven warming and reduced sea-ice conditions to Arctic marine ecosystems. Over the period of 1974-2014, the date of summer sea ice retreat has occurred earlier at a rate of approximately -0.7 d/yr. The years 2017-2019 were identified as anomalously warm in the Northern Bering and Chukchi Seas and were further characterized by substantial winter sea ice loss. Additional physical changes in the Pacific Arctic include increased heat transport of Pacific water through the Bering Strait, occurrences of marine heat waves, and increased storm activities in the High Arctic. These physical conditions drive multiple ecological impacts spanning the entire Arctic ecosystem from phytoplankton and marine bacteria to marine mammals and ultimately Indigenous and First Nations Peoples throughout the region including Central Yup'ik, Cup'ik, St. Lawrence Island Yupik, Unangan, and Iñupiat. Indigenous communities in the region rely heavily on the marine ecosystem for sustenance, social cohesion, and cultural values.

Climate change is a large-scale phenomenon which underlies multiple regional pressures that affect human activities and the marine ecosystem. Accelerating climate change effects individual ecosystem stressors, the intensity of the pressures on the ecosystem, and the linkages among these.

Additional pressures such as increased marine traffic, harmful algal blooms, invasive species, noise, contamination, litter, hypoxia, ocean acidification and microplastics impact the marine ecosystems of the Pacific-Arctic and its gateways.

To adequately understand the drivers, evolution and impacts of these various pressures, how they interact with each other, and how those interactive changes impact Arctic communities, it is important to develop and support trans-disciplinary and collaborative approaches using knowledge co-production methods. The interweaving of academic and Indigenous knowledge systems is a key component in this effort. In this workshop, we will focus on present and future pressures and human activities in the Arctic Ocean and Pacific Gateways in alignment with PICES activities with discussions around the evolution of climate-change related pressures acting on the ecosystems. We will identify available information on non-climatic pressures, understanding available knowledge tools, academic and Indigenous, and how to appropriately apply them to achieve a holistic view of the pressures and their impacts, and identifying equitable adaptation/policy/conservation pathways.

Workshop W4 will not call for abstract since all speakers are pre-assigned.

Marine carbon dioxide removal (mCDR) technologies have emerged as a promising tool for mitigating climate change. This technology is closely entangled with natural carbon cycles, and its impact on biogeochemical cycles of carbon, oxygen, and nutrients must be thoroughly assessed throughout its development process. However, implementation of this technology is not straightforward due to the transdisciplinary nature of this complicated issue. It is necessary to facilitate better communication and develop a dialogue between the disciplines involved including social scientists, engineers, and oceanographers.

In PICES countries, research on mCDR is still in its early stages, and there is currently no established communication channel between natural carbon cycle scientists and mCDR researchers. To address this, we are hosting a workshop to bring together experts from all fields. Representatives from several existing cross-disciplinary communication programs like the Global Ocean Acidification Observing Network (GOA-ON) CDR working group and the Deep-Ocean Stewardship Initiative (DOSI) will also participate. Throughout the workshop, we will share information on what each mCDR program is doing, what mCDR communities require from the natural carbon cycle community, and how we can develop a consistent dialogue between the two communities.

Workshop W5 will not call for abstract since all speakers are pre-assigned.

The goal of the workshop is to develop schematic diagrams describing the mechanisms through which basin-scale processes drive biogeochemical variability across the Pacific on interannual, decadal and secular timescales influencing variability and long-term changes over 50- to 100-year periods. A specific example would be a sketch showing how variability in the wintertime ventilation in the NW Pacific affects the oxygen concentration in the California Undercurrent in the eastern Pacific (what are the pathways and timescales). These schematics would then form the basis for testable hypotheses that could be examined using models and data in a future PICES Working Group. The ultimate goal is to link basin scale circulation variability to the water properties that affect coastal ecosystems. This would provide a potential basis for forecasting on a variety of time scales.

The workshop would have 2 outputs: 1) a set of schematics showing how basin-scale processes drive variability for specific biogeochemical variables (e.g. dissolved oxygen, nitrate, phosphate, silicate, and iron) across the Pacific; and 2) a proposal for a PICES Working Group to test the validity of the hypotheses represented by the schematics.

Workshop W6 will not call for abstract since all speakers are pre-assigned.

Collecting and effectively using ocean data is crucial for addressing urgent environmental and ocean challenges. A robust data pipeline is needed to ensure data are efficiently processed, managed, and mobilized to inform research, policy, and sustainable resource management. This workshop aims to build on the outcomes from our previous PICES workshop, Co-creating a shared framework for ocean data management: Finding common ground on terminology (Workshop 6), where we collaboratively developed a conceptual model of the data pipeline and general terminology for pipeline phases. The upcoming workshop will focus on refining this model and discussing effective strategies and important considerations for managing and mobilizing diverse data types in ocean science. The objectives of the workshop are to: 1) review and enhance the conceptual diagram developed during the last workshop, 2) explore effective strategies and practical steps across the data lifecycle, considering the unique data management, integration, and mobilization challenges of various ocean data types, as well as metadata handling. This workshop will bring together ocean professionals interested in and working with ocean data across a range of experience levels (e.g., early career professionals, data managers, researchers), countries, institutions, and data types (e.g. oceanography, satellite, fisheries, eDNA, images) to foster a shared understanding of data management practices. The workshop will produce a refined data pipeline model that considers diverse data types and a white paper of effective strategies shared by participants (e.g., to be submitted to PICES press). In doing so, the workshop aims to lay a foundation for improved data practices within and across PICES, the UN Ocean Decade, and the broader international marine science community.

Marine top-predators such as marine birds and mammals (MBMs) both respond to and affect entire food-webs through top-down and bottom-up trophic linkages. As well, these organisms tend to be large charismatic organisms that are relatively easy to monitor making them tractable indicators of ecosystem health and change. The detection of biological changes in these animals has proven them to be strong indicators for identifying the effects on long-term (e.g. global warming), mid-term (e.g. basin-scale regime shifts and Kuroshio meandering), and short-term (e.g. marine heat waves) changes in physical and biological oceanography. They have also been used to indicate levels of pollution in regions of their world previously thought to be pristine. S-MBM has focused on the key roles of top-predators in marine ecosystems, and our monitoring data and interdisciplinary collaboration has highlighted the scientific needs to identify changes in ocean ecosystems and to predict those responses in future. In recent years, unprecedented events that can trigger massive die-offs have been observed in MBMs, and because of their ecological roles, these die-offs have ecosystem level implications One example is Avian influenza viruses (AIVs), which was recently reported to cause rapid mass die-offs for Peruvian pelicans (Pelecanus thagus) and South American sea lions (Otaria flavescens) in the south Pacific. Also, in the western North Pacific, northern fur seals (Callorhinus ursinus) experienced an AIV-caused mass die-off in 2023. Other events such as heat waves and harmful algae blooms (HABs) can also affect an ecosystem widely through trophic linkages. This session will present some case studies of significant health responses by top predators to unusual oceanographic, climatic, or anthropogenic events. We further discuss how we detect, prevent, and address large scale mortality events, and other serious health impacts, that can have wide-reaching ecosystem implications (e.g., impact on fisheries, or agricultural systems).

The UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (Ocean Decade; 2021-2030) provides a unique opportunity to convene global partners to address challenges associated with climate change, marine ecosystem health, and food security. The Ocean Decade Programme ‘Sustainability of Marine Ecosystems Through Global Knowledge Networks’ (SMARTNET), jointly sponsored by ICES and PICES, works with several other Programmes to advance knowledge generation and sharing to support ocean sustainability, with an emphasis on coordination and collaboration with Small Island Developing States (SIDS). We will highlight the role of local and traditional knowledge from Pacific SIDS in shaping ocean science. This knowledge, rooted in cultural practices and environmental stewardship, offers unique insights that complement scientific approaches, making it essential for effective ocean management and climate resilience in SIDS. In this Workshop, we aim to convene ocean practitioners, stakeholders, and rightsholders from Pacific SIDS with members of the PICES and Asia Pacific Network for Global Change Research (APN) communities to assess the opportunities, priorities, methods and challenges for co-designing ocean science in SIDS. We will explore a wide variety of issues of immediate concern to SIDS, including sustainable fisheries, ecosystem services, food security, impacts of climate extreme events on coastal and island communities, and disaster risk reduction. We will synthesize local and traditional knowledge frameworks from Pacific SIDS with the PICES and APN scientific enterprise to optimize strategies for actionable science, trust building, and respectful collaborative practices. An outcome of this Workshop will be a white paper outlining good practices for the co-design and implementation of ocean science in Pacific SIDS.

Suggested Workshop Format:

• Presentations: Short introductory presentations from Pacific SIDS representatives outlining priority ocean concerns and challenges, and from PICES and APN representatives outlining scientific capacity (2 hours).
• Facilitated breakout groups on opportunities, priorities, methods and challenges for co-designing ocean science in Pacific SIDS; identification of potential case studies (2 hours).
• Plenary discussion: Report back from breakout groups, identification of good practices for co-design of ocean science in Pacific SIDS, and determination of next steps, including follow-up workshops at international symposia and white paper outline (2 hours).

Workshop W9 will not call for abstract since all speakers are pre-assigned.

Extreme Climate Events (ECEs) occur with regularity across the North Pacific. Physical ocean and atmospheric events cascade into ecological anomalies such as harmful algal blooms, marine species die offs, and changes in the distribution and abundance of species. These physical and ecological dynamics often have direct consequences for social systems requiring management such as through fishery closures or expansion, damage to infrastructure and property, and health problems. Currently, many resource management and policy frameworks do not yet handle the impacts of ECEs. In this workshop, participants will explore ECE case studies in the North Pacific to outline drivers, and their ecological and societal impacts using a cumulative effects framework (DSPIR: drivers, pressures, states, impacts, responses). Case studies will be derived from an ongoing bibliometric review conducted by Working Group 49 to census North Pacific ECEs. The DSPIR framework has been broadly applied to identify management and policy actions related to environmental problems. It draws out interactions between state changes and human impacts to identify where the system experiences shifts in ecosystem services and societal benefits and starts to identify suitable responses to control the adverse effects of the drivers and pressures. Participants will also link knowledge generated in the workshop to the PICES-specific SEES (social-ecological environmental system) framework. The SEES framework can help identify how PICES can streamline ECE science activities and solutions for the North Pacific. The workshop will aim to generate information for researchers and decision-makers to enable actionable solutions and build understanding of the similarities and differences in outcomes across different ECEs. Tentative outcomes of the workshop include publication(s) documenting case studies and contribution to Working Group 49’s final report.

Marine heatwaves (MHW) are becoming increasingly common in the North Pacific, fundamentally altering ecosystems and upending well-established climate indicators (i.e. ENSO, PDO). While the drivers of MHW and other extreme conditions (including ocean acidification and hypoxia) in the open ocean are relatively well-understood, little is known about how these extremes form or are advected in shelf and coastal waters. For example, subsurface MHWs can linger for several years in coastal waters after an open ocean event yet the causes of this persistence remain poorly understood. Near-shore climate signals are difficult to assess due to heterogenic variability and natural dynamics, including both regular (e.g. tidal) and synoptic (e.g. wind events, freshwater inflow) events impact the coastal waters. The dynamic nature of shelves result is waters that can rapidly modify over relatively short time scales. Mooring and other fixed station (e.g. shore stations, bottom-landers) data are collected at a high frequency, normally on the order of minutes to hours, so are an ideal way to examine processes that occur at most time scales. A discussion the 2024 AP-NPCOOS business meetings found that each PICES nation has collected mooring data on their shelves for at least the past 20 years. By examining these time series together, we could learn about the formation, advection, and dissipation of climate extremes in North Pacific shelf waters.

We propose a workshop at PICES 2025 that will focus on jointly examining the shelf mooring and fixed-site data collected from each PICES nation. It is anticipated that the first half of the workshop will focus on information sharing, with both updates from each member country to complete an overview of available mooring shelf data with a focus on long (i.e. greater than 20 year) time series and invited speakers from the eastern and western Pacific. The second half of the workshop will focus on methods to systematically examine the data with the focus on data products for publication.

Non-indigenous species (NIS) pose significant ecological and economic risks to marine ecosystems, further intensified by globalization and climate change. Global climate change has reshaped species distributions, increasing the likelihood of new introductions and invasions, with a noticeable rise over the last decade. Despite prevention efforts, species continue to be introduced requiring effective and cost-efficient early detection strategies. This workshop will explore the application of environmental DNA (eDNA) and environmental omics techniques for detecting and monitoring NIS in the North Pacific and beyond, aligning with PICES' mission to enhance marine science and promote sustainable resource management. The workshop will review the global landscape of eDNA and environmental omics monitoring, examining their strengths and limitations for detecting NIS, while emphasizing the need for standardized approaches. Additionally, it will investigate the impact of climate change on NIS patterns and how these advanced detection techniques can improve monitoring accuracy, supporting PICES’ focus on understanding climate-related shifts in marine ecosystems. The workshop aims to foster collaboration by creating a platform for sharing best practices, methodologies, and lessons learned, reinforcing PICES’ commitment to capacity building and scientific exchange among member nations. Lastly, it will discuss how data from eDNA and environmental omics can be effectively integrated into management strategies, bridging the gap between science and policy to enhance ecosystem resilience and biodiversity protection. Although the focus will be on NIS we recognize molecular techniques are of interest to the PICES community broadly and so invite participation where eDNA and omics approaches have been used for other applications (conservation monitoring, stock assessment, etc.).