June 12, 2024 — In the marine waters off Alaska’s coast, climate change is triggering disruptions that can be dramatic and sudden. For fishery officials, that presents a quandary: How can that be suitably addressed by a fishery management system that is legally required to be cautious and deliberate and for which policy changes can take several years to carry out?
That was the question presented at a two-day climate scenarios workshop held Wednesday and Thursday in Kodiak by the North Pacific Fishery Management Council. The workshop was in conjunction with the council’s June meeting.
There were repeated calls among workshop participants — fishers, fishery managers, scientists and others involved in the Alaska seafood industry — for more extensive and frequent federal data collection. But there were also calls for the way data is collected to change.
Surveys used to set seafood harvests in the federal waters of the Bering Sea, around the Aleutiansand in theGulf of Alaska are conducted by the Alaska Fisheries Science Center, a branch of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Fisheries service.