Our oceans are responsible for the uptake and sequestration of anthropogenic carbon, absorbing approximately 44.5 billion tons of CO₂ since 2000. Consequently, the ocean plays a critical role in mitigating greenhouse gas emissions. Fishing occurs over much of the ocean and high levels will often co-occur within productive regions leading to high carbon sequestration potential in sediments or the deep-sea. The role of fishing in ocean carbon budgets has attracted considerable attention, and controversy, in recent years (E.g. Sala et al 2021, and in the recent David Attenborough film “Ocean”). Fishing is important in three contexts: Firstly: changes in the food web structure and fish abundances, impacting the Biological Carbon Pump; Secondly, disturbance of the seafloor from trawling, and the consequent release and potential remineralization of sequestered carbon; and thirdly, the direct greenhouse gas emissions from fuel use in fishing. These three contexts are not independent e.g. fishing with less seabed-impacting gears can lead to reduced fuel use. This session will invite papers across all three contexts, and their interactions. We particularly invite papers that can describe the processes at local, basin or global scales and that place these in the perspectives of other oceanic process, industries and/or climate change

• Fisheries and Aquaculture -
• Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry -