Marine research in Alaska's high seas: North Pacific Research Board's science plan maps study of Alaska's seas.

• Author: Tkacz, Bob
• Position: Fishing

Twenty-five years after the State of Alaska and the United States began the famed Dinkum Sands dispute over control of near-shore oil leasing on the Beaufort Sea, the North Pacific seafood industry, state and federal governments are working together to coordinate practical and pure marine ecosystem research on a scale not previously seen in the region. The connection between those events may not be obvious, but like the perpetual mystery that starts just below the surface of Alaska's seas, it becomes clearer with a closer look

The hand on the research tiller, or to be more scientifically accurate, the 40 of them, comprise the North Pacific Research Board, which completed its first science plan last October. Created by an act of Congress in 1997, the 20-member panel is charged with "building a clear understanding of the North Pacific, Bering Sea and Arctic Ocean ecosystems that enables effective management and sustainable use of marine resources." The board meets its mandate by annually funding million of dollars in marine-related research proposals, responding to areas of interest it has identified, with money from the federal Environmental Improvement and Restoration Fund.

The EIRF was established with half of the $1.6 billion in Outer Continental Shelf lease sale revenue the U.S. Supreme Court awarded to the federal government in the Dinkum Sands suit. Under the act that created the EIRF, 20 percent of its interest earnings, not subject to further appropriation by Congress, go directly to the Secretary of Commerce for marine research. The system is about as close as one can get to a permanent congressional appropriation that is free of the potential for mischief in the congressional decision-making process.

Even without ready scientific data to support the conclusion, it is likely to be the most lucrative of its many lawsuits against the federal government that the state ever lost.

A MARCH BLESSING

The masterful legislating by Sen. Ted Stevens that established the system only set the stage for the seven-year organizational process that was completed when the NPRB science plan was submitted to the National Research Council for the last of repeated reviews. The NRC, an element of the National Academy of Sciences, is expected to bless the NPRB's science plan as a world-class, long-term research strategy this March. If that alphabet soup of agencies and plans is confusing, consider the status quo that the overall NPRB process is meant to sort out.

Over the past decade, the federal government, industry and environmental groups and others have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into marine research in the high Pacific latitudes. Too often, these efforts were responses to the crash of a fish stock or an endangered species listing, and the research it produced seemed to get little attention until the next round of legal battles.

The lawsuits will certainly continue, but the NPRB and its operating process...