It is important to begin the climate-resilience planning process by defining, as clearly as possible, the fishery system that is under consideration. This step helps facilitate understanding the resource under consideration as well as the main actors who are influencing or affected by the fishery, and therefore who should be involved in the planning process. Understanding these components will influence the scope of climate-related concerns that are considered, the long-term goals that are established, how climate-resilience attributes are assessed, and the actions that are prioritized.

While the assessment and planning process can be approached narrowly or broadly, the system bounds used should be clear, and the planning process should be equitable and inclusive within its bounds by ensuring groups that are part of the system are considered and engaged.

The following questions can be useful to define the fishery system:

• What fish species, vessel types, gear types, fishing ports, types of fishers, and geographic areas will be the focus of planning?
• What are the habitats, oceanographic characteristics, or other ecosystem features associated with the fishery?
• Which political entities, laws, regulations, and monitoring and enforcement systems affect the fishery?
• In addition to fishers, who else has economic, social, or cultural connections to the fishery? For example, what are the businesses and industries in the fishery supply chains? Are there indigenous or local groups that are a part of the fishery or that have strong ties to the resource?
• Are there elders, scientists, or other individuals who hold unique knowledge about the fishery that may be valuable for planning?

When developing the case studies on which the Tool is based, authors used an extensive list of questions that shaped how they defined and bounded each fishery case.

For the Climate-Resilient Fisheries Planning Tool, fisheries may be defined in different ways depending on the interests and capacity of those involved in the planning process. We suggest considering the ecological, socio-economic, and governance dimensions of the fishery system, but users can create additional or different categories as needed.

An effective process does not need to include all parts of the broader fishery-related system. Most of the case studies focus on one or a few parts. For example, a fishery may be defined narrowly by including only a single fish species and fishing vessel owners and crew from a single port. Or it may be defined more broadly by including multiple species, multiple ports, the ecosystem that supports the fish species, or additional stakeholders such as supply chain actors, including buyers, processors, marketers, and other non-fishers who rely on the fishery for food and income. Defining the fishery as inclusively as possible given knowledge of the system and capacity for stakeholder engagement will reduce the possibility of the planning goals and actions having unintended consequences for stakeholders.

There are many ways to compile and present the information about the fishery system that is generated in Step 1, ranging from a simple list to a rough sketch diagram to a complex visualization. The choice of how to display the information depends on the intended audience and the skills and time available for completing this step.