SEAFOODNEWS.COM By John Sackton and Peggy Parker — November 18, 2014 — Alaska pollock stocks have surged to more than double their ten year average in one of the most stunning fisheries management successes on the planet. Yet in the face of such a success, Greenpeace refuses to revise its ‘redlist’ advice on Alaska pollock, and will downgrade retailers who sell Alaska pollock.
Despite grim warnings from Greenpeace in 2008, global pollock stocks in the Bering Sea did not collapse. In fact, they are now in excellent shape.
The latest assessment of Alaska pollock, released today at the Groundfish Plan Team meeting in Seattle, describes a healthy and growing biomass.
The Alaska Fisheries Science Center’s annual stock assessment recommends a 2015 Allowable Biological Catch (ABC) limit of 1.35 million mt. The Total Allowable Catch (TAC) will be set by the North Pacific Fishery Management Council in early December.
Russian pollock stocks from western Bering Sea (WBS) and its productive Navarin area, while smaller than the Bering Sea stocks, are also considered healthy. The projected spawning biomass for 2015 is 1.9 million mt. A total catch of 408.6 thousand tons is expected next year.
AFSC’s report pegs a total biomass (not just female spawners, but all pollock age 3 and older) at 9.2 million metric tons in the water now and predicts 9.4 million tons for 2016. This is 500,000 metric tons more than predicted a year ago, and more than double the previous ten year average of total biomass.
Historically this massive fishery, which represents 40% of the global whitefish production, has yielded an annual catch of 1.2 million mt. Catches ranged from a low of .815 million mt in 2009 to a high of 1.5 million mt during 2003 – 2006.
The prediction of the 2009 catch, made in the fall of 2008, triggered an over-the-top response from Greenpeace.
“Billion Dollar Fishing Industry on the Verge of Collapse” blazed across the group’s website in October 2008. The campaign that followed was aimed at fundraising mostly but listed three goals for donors to work toward: 1) cut the 2009 pollock catch in the Bering Sea by half; 2) ban all pollock fishing in the A-season (three months early in the year) when the fishery produces high-value roe; and 3) establish more marine reserves.
They also prominently called for halting pollock sales in supermarkets and graded retailers on whether they complied.
Why? Because, as they explained then:
– the species has a life history that makes it vulnerable to overexploitation
– the species is sourced from overfished and depleted stocks, or is being fished at such high levels the stock will soon be overfished
– the fishing methods used to catch the species are highly destructive to other marine life and/or marine habitats
Greenpeace, whose representatives attend the management meetings and had access to the stock assessment reports and all the analyses, offered no evidence to support their rationale. The picture they painted was dire, but it was largely imagined.
First, a species life history doesn’t make it vulnerable to overexploitation, poor management does.
Second, Alaska pollock is not sourced from overfished or depleted stocks and never has been. Further, the stock itself has never been overfished.
Finally, because Alaska Pollock is caught in a mid-water trawl, there is little destruction to the seabed and relatively lower bycatch on a per ton of pollock basis.
The grain of truth on which they based their hysteria came from a sentence in the 2008 pollock stock assessment.
“The stock is estimated to be below the Bmsy [biomass’s maximum sustainable yield] level and current projections indicate that the stock should increase and be above the Bmsy level by 2010,” wrote Jim Ianelli, senior scientist at AFSC and main author of the report.
“The 2009 projection indicates that since the stock appears to show positive signs of recruitment following 4-5 successively below-average year-classes, the spawning stock is anticipated to be close to the Bmsy level by 2010,” the report added.
Maximum sustainable yield (MSY) is a target all responsible fish managers shoot for. It represents a population that can continue its level of abundance indefinitely with restricted annual fishery removals. A population above that is great. Lower than that triggers more restrictive management measures, like a shorter season or lower catch limits. There are usually two or three steps available to restrict fishing to sustainable levels before a complete closure is considered.
Greenpeace’s request that donors and retail partners work toward cutting the catch in half, banning all fishing for the first three months, and make new marine reserves was overwrought and under researched.
Catch limits were not cut in half for 2009, but lowered to levels that were calculated to reduce mortality on spawners, young fish, and the biomass as a whole.
The A-season was not closed in 2009. Instead the catch limit dropped during those three months, again to put less pressure on a smaller stock size.
As for marine reserves, there are currently 65 marine protected areas in Alaska. In 2008, there were an estimated 50. Each was created to specifically protect a species or habitat (or both). Each was supported by research that described and quantified a threat, and included analysis of protective measures supporting a specific goal.
Precautionary and justifiable management principles were put into place in 2009 and 2010. Alaska pollock stocks rebounded in 2010 and have grown since then to their highest levels in several years. This is the definition of responsible management.
The pollock success story is not easy, simple, or cheap. It takes a dedicated nation and an industry committed to protecting resources for future use.
“Eastern Bering Sea pollock is likely the most data-rich species in the region,” says Ianelli. Annual trawl surveys have been conducted by the AFSC in the Eastern Bering Sea since 1979. For pollock, the survey has been instrumental in providing abundance indices and information on the population age structure.
“Nonetheless,” says Ianelli, “age determination protocols, spatial distribution of pollock by season, the relationship between climate and recruitment, stock structure potential, and trophic interactions of pollock within the ecosystem” would all “improve our understanding of stock dynamics and [be] useful for fisheries management.”
In the next few months, Greenpeace will again go to retailers claiming that the pollock fishery must be severely limited, with no scientific basis for their claims.
On the contrary, their upcoming demand to force retailers to avoid pollock caught in the waters above various Bering Sea Canyons is being made without reference to the huge data collection effort underway by NOAA to assess the benthic habitats in the Bering Sea canyons, and the extent, if any, that these are vulnerable to impacts from fishing.
In 2008 and 2009 Greenpeace had to willfully ignore the science and management efforts that quickly brought the pollock stocks to record abundance. Otherwise they would have had to revise their advice on which fish to avoid.
Indications are that in 2014 they plan again to willfully ignore the scientific effort to understand Bering Sea Canyon habitat, developed with much money, time, and effort. Why? To save face by still telling retailers they must avoid or restrict pollock, rather than admiting that science and history shows this fish does not belong on their redlist.
This story originally appeared on Seafood.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.