This report is written in a manner that should make it useful to anyone with an interest in fisheries, from the fisherman on the boat to the fish marketer, the scientist in the office, managers, and politicians. Material is presented in a comprehensive but comprehensible fashion that permits an exploration of the key issues and leads to the development of an understanding of the underlying principles and problems. In recent years, Canadians have become increasingly aware of the dynamic and changing nature of fishery systems, which include not only the fish and their environment, but also people and their associated social and economic institutions and communities. As a result of the challenges created by our constantly changing fisheries, the Canadian Global Change Program of the Royal Society of Canada formed an interdisciplinary Fisheries Panel of nine people in 1996. The panel's mandate was to write an authoritative and comprehensive review of the implications of physical, biological, economic, and socio-political changes for Canadian marine fisheries and to present options for how to deal with those changes.