Sea Change Australia

Topics at the nexus of climate change, fisheries, and blue foods
2026-03-20 02:00 - 16:00 (Australia/Melbourne)
Data Discovery and Knowledge Networks to Support Informed Fisheries Management
Presentation 1: Salmon Data Discovery Tool, presented by Katie Barnas (NOAA) and Monica Diaz (PSMFC)
Presentation 2: North Pacific Ocean Knowledge Network, presented by Kathryn Berry (BECI / PICES)

Futures of Seafood: Pathway to a thriving Australian seafood community
2026-03-13 14:00 - 15:00, 2026-02-25 14:00 - 15:00, 2026-02-13 14:00 - 15:00 (Australia/Melbourne)
Futures of Seafood: Pathway to a thriving Australian seafood community

The Futures of Seafood Study set out to deliver an industry-informed program of work to support the transition to a secure, resilient and thriving Australian seafood community.
Please join Seafood Industry Australia and the Blue Economy CRC for this webinar as we take you through the draft roadmap. This roadmap has been informed by the collection of a comprehensive evidence base including integrated spatial mapping, economic modelling, scenario analysis and consultation with industry all across Australia.
The webinar will cover:

High-level outline of key components within the roadmap
Elements where feedback is sought and how you can get involved
Next steps

“Futures of Seafood. Wild catch. Aquaculture. Recreational. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders” was supported by funding from Fisheries Research and Development Corporation, Blue Economy CRC, the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, and Department Climate Change, Energy, Environment and Water. It has received countless in-kind contributions from Australian Fisheries Management Forum members, industry, and research partners.
Register here

2026 BioInnovation Festival
2026-03-09 - 2026-03-13
The BioInnovation Festival is a groundbreaking, five-day event that brings together the brightest minds in life sciences to celebrate innovation, investment, and collaboration. Spanning across medical, health, agriculture, aquaculture, and broader biological science sectors, this inaugural festival provides an unparalleled platform for exploring cutting-edge technologies, forging valuable partnerships, and driving the bioinnovation ecosystem forward.
Join us for five days of innovation, insights, and connection at Western Australia’s premier life sciences event, running 9–13 March 2026 across Perth and the South West.
Experience:
50+ world-class speakers across Health & Medical and Aquatic & Agricultural streams
Startup Alley and a vibrant Exhibition Hall showcasing cutting-edge innovations
Networking opportunities with WA’s life sciences leaders, innovators, and investors
Satellite events across the region for deep-dive learning and collaboration
Whether you’re a founder, researcher, investor, or industry professional, the BioInnovation Festival is the place to connect, learn, and be inspired.
Secure your spot today!

Tasmania's Seafood Festival
2026-03-07 - 2026-03-09 | Victoria Dock, Dunn Place, Hobart, Tasmania, 7000, Australia
This brand-new event is splashing into the Hobart waterfront over the March long weekend to celebrate world-class seafood, local producers, and the waterfront community.

Proudly presented by Mures Tasmania, and sponsored by TasPorts, this free three-day festival will turn Victoria Dock into a buzzing seaside playground filled with delicious food & drink stalls, live entertainment, and plenty of family-friendly fun.
A whole crew of seafood stars are hitting the festival main stage to talk & taste all things ocean!

From 12-3pm each day, head to the main stage for tuna carvings, oyster splitting, indigenous abalone and much more! Check out the full tide of events in our program, and don’t miss your chance to sample the catch of the day straight from the stage.

Aquaculture for the future 2026 outlook: What’s in store for WA aquaculture?
2026-02-19 15:00 - 16:00 (Australia/Melbourne)
On Thursday 19 February at 12pm AWST, join ACWA’s discussion on what aquaculture operators should have on their radar for 2026. We’ll hear from industry experts on recent developments in aquaculture – including innovation, research, and the latest in WA management and regulation.

Webinar: Preparing for a more volatile future
2026-02-19 13:00 - 14:00 UTC
Details
Across Australia, devastating bushfires, floods, a marine heatwave and enormous harmful algal bloom are affecting communities and wildlife. While natural disasters have long shaped this country, climate change is increasing their frequency and intensity, creating a more volatile future.

What does it take to prepare for a future shaped by more frequent disasters and a changing climate – and build resilience for people and nature?

In this interactive webinar, experts will share practical insights on what the future holds and how Australia can strengthen disaster readiness and response – drawing on lessons from events such as bushfires and marine heatwaves – while also addressing the often-overlooked mental health impacts of these events.

The webinar will include a Q&A session.

Register for the event here: https://events.teams.microsoft.com/event/22c8e5c4-ca2e-4603-b15d-01e44f15116f@fea0918e-fa13-41bf-affb-5f7ef42ce0c6

Modeling the impacts of climate change on oceanic processes and fisheries: Upwelling systems as natural laboratories for understanding climate change impacts on marine ecosystems and fisheries
2026-02-19 11:00 - 13:00 (America/New_York)
Presentation 2: Upwelling systems as natural laboratories for understanding climate change impacts on marine ecosystems and fisheries
Eastern Boundary Upwelling Systems (EBUS) are highly productive and highly variable ocean systems. Forage fish in EBUS represent some of the world’s most important fisheries resources, while playing a key role in the food-web as prey for other fish, seabirds and marine mammals. Understanding how the climate-driven variations and shifts in temperature, planktonic productivity, and oxygen conditions affect ecosystem functioning, fisheries yield, and fishing-dependent communities in EBUS can therefore help us to better understand the resilience of marine fisheries systems to climate change. This presentation will discuss process-based ecological models for the California Current (CaCu) and the Northern Humboldt Current (Peruvian) systems, which link fish population and food-web dynamics fitted to observations, to climate forcing from regional ocean-biogeochemical models and fisheries impacts. An age-structured Model of Intermediate Complexity (MICE) for the CaCu explicitly represents environmental driving of processes such as recruitment, food avail-ability, migration, and reproduction, using an ensemble approach to quantify ecological uncertainty. A spatial food-web model (Ecosim-Ecospace) for the Peruvian upwelling system captures environment-driven dynamics in fisheries resources, trophic interactions and regionally detailed socio-economic scenarios. Using future projections under regionally downscaled Earth system models, we assess climate-driven shifts in fish productivity, food-web interactions, spatial distributions, and fisheries over the 21st century. The presented models support ecosystem-based fisheries governance and the co-development of adaptation strategies to sustain blue food production under global change.
Webinar Presenter: Stefan Koenigstein studies marine ecosystems and fisheries, combining concepts and methods from ecology, ecophysiology, and the climate and sustainability sciences to investigate how marine living resources are shaped by environmental and ecosystem conditions, and impacted by fisheries and other anthropogenic pressures. Dr. Koenigstein uses ecological models as integrative tools to better understand system responses, feedbacks and possible future trajectories, incorporating observational and experimental data, regional ocean and earth system model output, and stakeholder input. A primary focus of the modeling is on increasing incorporation of biological processes and advancing quantification of uncertainty. Dr. Koenigstein aims to improve the potential of models for extrapolation into the future under multiple global change drivers, and support the co-development of scientific advice for ecosystem-based governance and adaptation.
Since 2025, Dr. Koenigstein has led the newly established Working Group Ecosystems and Resource Sustainability at Leibniz Centre for Tropical Marine Research in Bremen, Germany. Previously, Dr. Koenigstein was a Project Scientist at University of California Santa Cruz and NOAA Southwest Fisheries Science Center, working on multi-species population dynamic models for forage fish species in the California Current. He has worked in interdisciplinary research projects in Peru, Portugal and Norway, linking marine ecology to fisheries, with an additional focus on incorporating local stakeholder input. He has also led the development of an educational table-top/role-playing game for high schools and environmental education groups, teaching an understanding of ocean systems and their users (www.ocean-limited.com).
*Note – the time zone may not suit, but if you register you will be able to receive a link to the recording

Modeling the impacts of climate change on oceanic processes and fisheries: Climate change risks for regional marine ecosystems and fisheries
2026-02-19 11:00 - 13:00 (America/New_York)
Presentation 1: Climate change risks for regional marine ecosystems and fisheries
Climate change is affecting ocean temperature, acidity, currents, and primary production, causing shifts in species distributions, marine ecosystems, and ultimately fisheries. Earth system models simulate climate change impacts on physical and biogeochemical properties of future oceans under varying emissions scenarios. Coupling these simulations with an ensemble of global marine ecosystem models has indicated broad decreases of fish biomass with warming. However, regional details of these impacts remain much more uncertain. Here, we employ CMIP5 and CMIP6 climate change impact projections using two Earth system models coupled with four regional and nine global marine ecosystem models in ten ocean regions to evaluate model agreement at regional scales. We find that models developed at different scales can lead to stark differences in biomass projections. On average, global models projected greater biomass declines by the end of the 21st century than regional models. For both global and regional models, greater biomass declines were projected using CMIP6 than CMIP5 simulations. Global models projected biomass declines in 86% of CMIP5 simulations for ocean regions compared to 50% for regional models in the same ocean regions. In CMIP6 simulations, all global model simulations projected biomass declines in ocean regions by 2100, while regional models projected biomass declines in 67% of the ocean region simulations. Our analysis suggests that improved understanding of the causes of differences between global and regional marine ecosystem model climate change projections is needed, alongside observational evaluation of modelled responses.
Webinar Presenter: Tyler Eddy is a Research Scientist at the Fisheries & Marine Institute, Memorial University, Canada. He is interested in past, present, and future human interactions with, and ecology of, marine ecosystems. Tyler is a Founding Coordinator of the Fisheries and Marine Ecosystem Model Intercomparison Project (FishMIP), a Steering Committee member of the Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services Scenario-based Inter-Model Comparison (BES-SIM), a Founding Section Editor of PLOS Ecosystems, and a Visiting Scientist at the Charles Darwin Research Station, Galápagos Islands, Ecuador.
*Note – the time zone may not suit, but if you register you will be able to receive a link to the recording

evokeAG. 2026
2026-02-17 - 2026-02-18 | Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre, 2 Clarendon St, South Wharf, Melbourne, Victoria, 3006, Australia
AgriFutures evokeAG. is Asia Pacific’s annual showcase of bold ideas, groundbreaking innovations and disruptive science driving agriculture towards a better future. Entering its sixth year, evokeAG. continues to facilitate investment, nurture innovation and create impact, which is reflected in its new evergreen tagline: Invest. Innovate. Impact. Since its inception in 2019, evokeAG. has brought together over 8,100 delegates, 391 investors, 577 speakers, and 1,122 primary producers to drive agriculture towards a better future.

World Seafood Congress
2026-02-09 - 2026-02-11 | Chennai Trade Centre, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India
The World Seafood Congress (WSC) brings together global seafood trade leaders, policymakers, and experts to explore the latest innovations, sustainability practices, and emerging trends impacting on safe sustainable seafood trade. Organized by the International Association of Fish Inspectors (IAFI)—a globally recognized NGO affiliated with the United Nations—WSC sets new benchmarks for global seafood trade, fostering collaboration, innovation, and progress.
