Alaska as a model for sustainable fisheries? Not quite. We are facing disaster unless we protect the fisheries and ecosystems in the state.

• Author: Hocevar, John
• Position: View I: Greenpeace

Our 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...