This session focuses on understanding estuarine finfish and shellfish population dynamics in relation to environmental trends and variability. Over the last decade, there have been significant strides made in quantifying and linking trends in populations and environmental drivers, which has provided new data and insights to fisheries and environmental managers. However, threats to economically and ecologically important species persist and may be intensifying due to large magnitude changes in estuarine hydrography and water quality, habitat loss, and increasing fishing pressure. Thus, the overarching research question we seek to address in this session is: How do these populations vary in response to changes in predominant biophysical stressors? Four major research themes and sub-questions are posed for the session.

1. Environmental change: How do fisheries populations change with a changing environment?

2. Thresholds for fisheries species: What are the environmental thresholds for changes?

3. Resource management: What are the linkages between environmental stressors, fisheries ecosystem services, economic systems, and management actions?

4. Environmental and fisheries prediction: Given knowledge of past and present trends and potential change scenarios, what will be the impact to fisheries populations and the implications for managers?