July 27, 2017 — Counting Atka mackerel became really important, according to National Marine Fisheries Service Biologist Suzanne McDermott, when Steller sea lions were declared endangered in 1997.
“We learned that Atka mackerel are their main food item,” McDermott said. “That’s when we really started looking at them in relation to Steller sea lions.”
McDermott knows the mammals face competition for their food — commercial fishermen. In 2016, Alaska fishermen caught and kept 55,000 metric tons of Atka mackerel and discarded another 532 tons as bycatch.
This summer, McDermott and her colleague David Bryan traversed the Aleutian Chain to answer a big question: are there enough fish to support both endangered Steller sea lions and commercial fishermen?