Australian commercial fisheries are facing unprecedented challenges that threaten their long-term viability and contribution to national food security. In this presentation, we examine the interconnected challenges facing Australian fisheries: social licence to operate; increasing competition for marine space (“spatial squeeze”); climate change; the management of complex multi-species fisheries; illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing; and broader regulatory and economic pressures, including cost-recovery. We highlight how perceptions of fisheries often differ from operational reality, noting substantial advances in ecosystem-based management, bycatch mitigation, stock rebuilding and environmental stewardship. At the same time, expanding marine industries, conservation zoning and competing ocean uses are reducing access to fishing grounds and exposing deficiencies in existing cross-sector governance arrangements. Climate change is also complicating things – it is already altering productivity, species distributions and ecosystem structure, increasing uncertainty and necessitating new risk-based management approaches, including climate-informed harvest strategies. Emerging fisheries management responses – such as climate risk assessment tools, multi-species harvest strategies and strengthened compliance and monitoring systems – are helping to respond to the complexity but they are not enough alone, as economic pressures further constrain industry resilience. We argue that many of these challenges extend beyond fisheries management agencies and require coordinated national responses that integrate fisheries within broader ocean, food security and climate adaptation policies. Australian fisheries provide an informative case study of the pressures confronting commercial fisheries globally. While current trajectories suggest declining seafood production and industry contraction, evidence indicates that integrated governance, improved social licence, climate-responsive management and targeted investment can sustain and enhance the future contribution of fisheries to food security, regional economies and marine stewardship.