62540 (2024). Teanau Tuiono to the Minister of Climate Change

62540 (2024). Teanau Tuiono to the Minister of Climate Change: What work, if any, is the Government undertaking to model the future impacts of climate change on New Zealand's marine territory and species, including fishing stocks?

Hon Simon Watts: I am advised that Fisheries New Zealand has a range of research projects underway or planned to model impacts of marine heatwaves on fisheries, and to develop a formal climate vulnerability assessment framework for assessing the impacts of climate change on New Zealand’s fish stocks. Various agencies, including Fisheries New Zealand, are also working alongside NIWA on a research project funded by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) to better forecast fish abundances in New Zealand under climate change. The Department of Conservation has recently mapped how the distribution of suitable habitats for many marine species could change by the end of the 21st century due to climate change, and has assessed the vulnerability for 83 groups of marine species to climate change. The Ministry for the Environment continues to invest in indicators of how climate change is affecting our oceans (for example ocean acidification and ocean warming) as part of its Environmental Reporting programme. MBIE has also awarded Endeavour funding to projects that investigate the future impacts of climate on our oceans but do not necessarily focus on species or stocks, for example on internal ocean waves and their potential for mitigating ocean warming in places or on modelling sea level rise over very long timescales.