Alaska Man Standing

Interestingly, bycatch is not vessel-size specific. In some fisheries, larger vessels actually have lower bycatch rates than smaller vessels. In other fisheries, it is the other way around. It is important to develop bycatch controls tailored to the specific conditions of the fisheries. The bottom line, though, is to measure the amount of bycatch, put in place limits on the rate or amount, and then enforce the rules.

The oddest thing to me was a shopping cart from Brazil. Go figure.

For example, many of the marine species you refer to are highly migratory, and the conservation problem arises from areas outside Alaska. A case in point is the short-tailed albatross, a highly endangered seabird. Driven to near extinction by hunting on their ancestral nesting islands off Japan, these birds now have only one nesting site, on the side of an active volcano. Marine protected areas will not do them any good. New nesting sites on more hospitable islands will. Our group is actively working to help in the efforts led by Japanese scientists to establish additional nesting populations. This is just one example. Endangered whales (decimated by whaling during the past century), some seabirds (pesticides, loss of nesting habitat), and sea otters (predation, changing ecosystem characteristics) all require conservation action but MPAs would not address the root issue.

Having said that, place-based conservation areas are appropriate in some instances. In the North Pacific, several of the terrestrial conservation units have marine waters within their boundary, thus affording some general protections to marine species. More to the point, though, the North Pacific Fishery Management Council has set aside nearly 400,000 square nautical miles to protect marine habitat and important species. This is a huge area.

Can more be done? Of course it can, if additional actions are needed. Management agencies like the council are continuously looking at the need for additional conservation measures including new or adjusted MPAs. But in our view, action to establish such measures needs to be driven by science, address specific conservation issues, have clear goals with measurable benefits, and have a sound monitoring and enforcement plan.

Most importantly, we have very healthy populations of fish in Alaska, and that is due to conservative management guided by science. Remember, there are no overfished stocks of fish in Alaska, where over half the nation's seafood is harvested.

I do avoid species like orange roughy and blue fin tuna because I am concerned about overfishing. Same with farmed fish, especially salmon. There are just too many potential problems.

What that means is that there are several buffers built into the harvest levels to ensure that overfishing does not occur. The NPFMC has a long track record of setting harvest levels at or below the levels recommended by the scientists. And it works. No overfished stocks, large areas of habitat protected, ecosystem considerations taken into account. We use hard caps, careful monitoring, and strict enforcement to make sure that what the scientists recommend, and the target levels set by the managers, are not exceeded.

I would recommend you go to the North Pacific Fishery Management Council website and look up the overall harvest levels there, as well as other information about how good management works.

One thing our organization is doing is developing a cooperative research program to bring state and federal scientists together with harvesters and other industry experts to look at a number of pressing fishery conservation issues. One thing we are looking at is the possibility of using fishing vessels as platforms of opportunity to carry oceanographic monitoring equipment. It could be an efficient and effective way to gather temperature, salinity, and other data from a wide area of the ocean for relatively little cost. I'm excited about this new program, and hope we can make a solid contribution to better understanding the marine environment.