What is FaCeT

What is FaCeT?

The Fisheries and Climate Toolkit (FaCeT) is a bi-coastal platform that allows users to track fisheries-relevant physical and biological ocean features across multiple timescales to support climate-ready and sustainable fisheries.

FaCeT uses the fundamental principles of dynamic ocean management to develop innovative, transformative, and actionable science.

Conserving and managing life in the ocean

FaCeT is an ongoing NASA Biodiversity and Ecological Forecasting project that seeks to support climate-ready and sustainable fisheries practices targeted in Sustainable Development Goal 14. The FaCeT team is developing online products and applications to support climate-resilient fisheries. These tools and applications will:

  • Visualizing dynamic species and vessel distributions
  • Tracking velocity and magnitude of change
  • Changing fishing portfolios
  • Addressing and communicating climate uncertainty in fisheries

The spatial distributions of highly migratory species and fishing fleets are shifting in response to climate-driven changes, and there is growing concern of greater ecological and economic disruptions as climate impacts increase. Existing management and conservation strategies need to consider future climate impacts which can affect the sustainability of fisheries worldwide.

By providing new and easily interpreted knowledge about the future distributions of species and vessels into a cohesive toolkit, FaCeT will provide a wide range of nowcasting and forecasting applications to directly address the specific management challenges, needs, and priorities that US and international fisheries face, in the context of climate variability and risk.

To accomplish this, FaCeT products will forecast species and vessel distributions over multiple timescales, from seasonal (days to months) to long-term (climatic). FaCeT tools will have a range of management applications such as assessing the efficacy of fisheries closures, exploring ways to reduce bycatch and non-target interactions, and informing climate-ready fisheries management.