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Weekly UpdatesOur oceans are in crisis, a fact that has been all too well established by scientists, but not yet addressed by policy-makers. While climate change, toxic pollution, destruction of coastal habitats, and high-nutrient runoff are collectively wreaking incalculable havoc on marine ecosystems, it is the industrialization of fishing that has been responsible for the most sweeping changes. Worldwide populations of large predatory fish, including marlin, swordfish and tuna, have been reduced by 90 percent since the introduction of industrial fishing. (1) Bottom trawling has decimated the deep-sea coral and sponge forests of the continental shelves. Entire fishing communities have ceased to exist as the fish populations on which they once depended have collapsed. (2)
COLLAPSE BY 2048?
A recent global scientific evaluation of the state of marine ecosystems suggested that most commercial fisheries could be in a state of collapse by 2048, based upon current trends. (3) Representatives of the Alaska fishing industry have argued that this is an exaggeration, pointing to Alaska fisheries management as a model that can allow for sustainable harvest of marine resources. (4)
The truth is a bit more complicated. Alaska's billion-dollar fishing industry is one of the most closely monitored in the world, but there are several causes for concern. The North Pacific Fishery Management Council (NPFMC) has been unable to prevent the decline of species such as pollock, Pacific cod, halibut or Atka mackerel; NPFMC models project significant drops in catch quotas for most groundfish species in the coming years. Three of the region's main pollock fisheries have been closed or severely limited due to overfishing: two in the Bering Sea--the Aleutian Island and Bogoslov fisheries; and one in the Gulf of Alaska--the Shelikof Strait roe fishery. Today, the vast majority of the fishing pressure is on the spawning aggregation in the eastern Bering Sea, home to the last pollock stock capable of supporting a sizable commercial fishery. Crab populations, managed by Alaska Fish and Game, have dropped dramatically. Braxton Dew, a National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) biologist, referred to the collapse of the red king crab in Bristol Bay in the early 1980s as "one of the most spectacular crashes in the history of U.S. fisheries management. (5)"
FOES OF FISH
Moving beyond the species targeted for fishing, the problems continue. Fish-eating predators--like endangered Steller sea lions, sea birds and northern fur seals--have declined sharply as fishing has removed millions of tons of their prey. A common thread linking these predators is their reliance on Alaska pollock, the target of the largest food fishery on the planet. NMFS has concluded that the pollock fisheries are likely to jeopardize Steller sea lion survival and recovery and adversely modify their habitat, and concern is growing that the fisheries may be responsible for the rapid disappearance of northern fur seals from the once massive rookeries on the Pribilof Islands.
These problems extend to the human members of Alaska's ecosystems as well.
FARTHER TO TRAVEL
Localized depletion has impacted communities throughout the southern half of the Bering Sea and the Aleutians, as well as the Gulf of Alaska. Fishermen are traveling farther and farther offshore in search of fish and crab that were once plentiful right off the beach, facing increasing risks for diminishing returns. Many of these communities live and die by the health of their surrounding waters; the human population of St. Paul Island dropped more than 25 percent following the collapse of the opilio crab fishery. (6) And for Alaska Natives who have lived off Alaska's marine resources for thousands of years, addressing localized depletion is a matter of cultural survival.
Fortunately, Alaska's waters have not faced heavy fishing pressure for as long as the North Atlantic, and the situation is not as dire as in the North Atlantic. It is not too late to protect Alaska's ecosystems, fisheries and communities. Fishery managers need to take a more precautionary, ecosystem-based management approach and Congress must address conflict of interest in America's fishery management councils.
The North Pacific Fishery Management Council has 11 voting members, comprised of four state and federal employees, six people who derive their income from the fishing industry, and one philanthropist, Ed Rasmuson. Council Chair Stephanie Madsen is also the executive director of the At-Sea Processors Association, a trade organization that lobbies on behalf of pollock and whiting trawlers. As with the other seven regional councils that manage the nation's fisheries, members of the NPFMC are exempt from conflict-of-interest laws. This exemption, together with the industry's domination of council membership, has typically resulted in management decisions that favored the short-term profits of the industrial fishery interests represented on the councils rather than the health of the ecosystem or small-boat commercial fishermen or subsistence communities. (7)
PRECAUTION URGED
In addition to addressing conflict of interest, many conservationists and Native communities feel that a more effective NPFMC would be less reactive and more precautionary. (In December, the Alaska Inter-Tribal Council passed a unanimous resolution urging the NPFMC to adopt "... more precautionary catch limits to ensure that fishery removals do not jeopardize fishing-dependent communities or recovery of marine populations.") Many of the measures celebrated by the council today were put in place after the damage had already been done--and even then only with considerable outside pressure. The burden of proof must be shifted from the ecosystem to the fishing industry. The council has allowed the fishing industry to exploit the near impossibility of proving cause and effect relationships in complex marine systems, refusing to take pro-active measures, which would impact fishing operations. Take one recent example, the NPFMC chose not to limit trawling in Bering Sea canyon habitats, which NMFS reported to be unique, diverse and productive, because not enough information was known about these habitats to justify protecting them. This is the opposite of precaution, allowing sensitive areas to be trawled and dragged without any idea of what may be lost as a result.
A more precautionary approach also needs to be taken regarding the impacts of commercial fisheries on the rest of the food web. The NPFMC responded to legal action taken by conservation groups to protect Steller sea lions by limiting fishing in sea lion critical habitat, but has gradually moved to increase fishing in these areas. Today, fisheries removal in sea lion critical habitat are approaching pre-litigation levels. And while northern fur seals continue to decline, the council has chosen to await further research rather than take precautionary measures based on available information.
CLIMATE, TOO
That climate change has begun to affect the Bering Sea is beyond dispute (8)--as is the fact that billions of pounds of fish are removed from Alaskan waters each year. (9) What no one can say for sure is what the interplay of these two enormous factors is doing to the ecosystem, or what their comparative importance is. Or, for that matter, what the combined effect of climate change and industrial fishing will be on America's most lucrative fisheries over the coming decades. Part of the reason it is so difficult to answer these questions is that there are no control areas. Almost without exception, there are no areas suitable for fishing that are not currently being fished. Without "no take" marine reserves to serve as experimental controls, NMFS and the NPFMC will be forced to continue to roll the dice with fisheries management, gambling that measures taken will be sufficient to protect Alaska's fisheries.
For all the hard work and all the tax dollars spent on managing Alaska's fisheries, fishery regulators have been unable to prevent the decline of many species and the degradation of a great deal of the seafloor habitat of the Bering Sea and the Gulf of Alaska. A lot of money is still being made, but fewer people are making it. The good news is that we have not yet fallen off the cliff--we can turn things around. But it's going to take putting a little more action behind our rhetoric when it comes to taking a precautionary, ecosystem-based approach in the North Pacific before Alaska's fisheries management can truly serve as a model for the rest of the country's fisheries.
RESOURCES
(1) Meyers, R. and B. Worm. "Rapid worldwide depletion of predatory fish communities." Nature 423 (2003): 280-283.
(2) After the collapse of cod stocks in Atlantic Canada, 30,000 people lost their jobs.
(3) Worm, B., et al. "Impacts of biodiversity loss on ocean ecosystem services." Science 314 (2006): 787-790.
(4) Benson, D. "Not the abyss." The Seattle Times, Letter to the editor, Nov. 7, 2006.
(5) Dew, C.B. and R.A. McConnaughey. "Did trawling on the brood stock contribute to the collapse of Alaska's king crab?" Ecological Applications 15 (2003): 919-941.
(6) Kruse, S. and H. Huntington. "The Pribilof Islands: establishing an economic baseline," a draft report prepared for the Pribilof Island Collaborative (2006). www.worldwildlife.org/beringsea_erbc/2006nov45/ PI_Establishing percent20Socioeconomic percent-20Baseline_Ecotrust_draft.pdf
(7) Eagle, J., S. Newkirk and B.H. Thompson Jr. "Taking stock of the Regional Fishery Management Councils." Pew Ocean Science Series (2003).
(8) Grebmeier, J.M. et al. "A major ecosystem shift the northern Bearing Sea." Science 311 (2006): 1461-1464
(9) NOAA Fisheries Commercial Landings, www. st.nmfs.gov/st1/commercial/index.html
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