Worldwide, in many coastal areas the local populations and economies depend on the goods and services the marine ecosystems provide. The pressure on those ecosystems has continuously increased in the last decades due to climate change and intensified anthropogenic use. Especially in coastal regions environmental changes, like increased storm intensity and frequency, changes in precipitation, increasing sea surface temperatures and ocean acidification, have tremendous effects on sea food production. Despite the global nature of this problem, we will have to tackle its causes and adapt to the coming changes on local scales, requiring local adaptation strategies and involvement of all relevant stakeholders. This study takes a trans-disciplinary approach to identify the threats as well as the opportunities climate change poses for the sea food industries on the German North Sea Coast. Two workshops were conducted to approach and involve key stakeholders and to tap their knowledge bases to obtain a new problem focus. The first workshop targeted a broad audience of local stakeholders from fisheries, fish processing, local government and tourism associations to NGOs, while the second workshops target audience were early stage marine researchers. Even though the participants’ perceptions were different in the two workshops and many different topics of importance were identified, they both noticed a great demand for improved communication between different stakeholder groups to enable the development of a local adaptation strategy for the sea food industries. One of the most important lessons learned from the workshops and stakeholder involvement is that a direct and clear transfer of knowledge between the different parties is crucial to increase the understanding of the process and impacts of climate change (Fig. 1). Furthermore novel inter- and trans-disciplinary approaches are needed in climate change research and management for the sea food industries including aquaculture and fisheries.