ANSWER 1

Written response:

The latest national recreational fishing survey (2023) found that nearly 1 in 5 Australians participate in saltwater recreational fishing. This means millions of people are regularly observing the marine environment around Australia’s coastlines while they engage in angling, many with deep, place-based knowledge of local marine life. Unsurprisingly, recreational fishers have played a key role in noticing and helping to document the impacts of climate change on Australia’s oceans.

For example, a recent study by Ryan et al. (2022) found that 60% of recreational fishers in Western Australia had noticed changes in the types of species they catch, including shifts in where species are found—one of the most well-documented ecological responses to ocean warming. While 67% of fishers in the study believed climate change is occurring, interestingly, even among those that reported being unsure or skeptical, many still reported observing physical changes (like warmer water, stronger currents, and higher tides) and biological changes (such as tropical species appearing in cooler waters) consistent with climate change.

Because recreational fishers are often highly familiar with their local fishing grounds and target species, they are well placed to detect unusual or new species arriving in an area. These early sightings can be the first signs of climate-driven range shifts—changes that can have important ecological and social consequences. Over the past decade, many hundreds of such observations have been logged by recreational fishers through the citizen science platform Redmap (Range Extension Database and Mapping Project; https://www.redmap.org.au/).

For instance, recent evidence of southern range extensions of Spangled Emperor along the New South Wales coast and Rankin Cod along the Western Australian coast (Wolfe et al. 2025, link) originated from fishers who noticed these species (along with a many others) appearing in places they hadn’t been seen before. These kinds of contributions are helping scientists track and understand the real-time impacts of climate change on marine biodiversity.