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FMAP will work toward predicting the future of marine life. Heretofore, attempts have consisted of imposing large changes on a poorly understood baseline. CoML field projects and HMAP, combined with other data assembled in OBIS, will provide a much better baseline and time series. FMAP will focus on two major aspects: the effects of trends in fishing and of possible climate change. Both will profoundly change the nature of marine ecosystems, and what will live in the ocean in the future. Among the initial prediction projects being considered are: (1) global fishing effort and its consequences, (2) effects of climate change on marine biodiversity, and (3) possible marine extinctions. Future fishing effort, depending on social choice, is fundamentally unknowable. Climate change may also be unknowable at the level of detail important for many species, but the use of plausible scenarios allows useful advances.
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