Transcript The Importance of Healthy Ocean Ecosystems for Alaska

Alaska Native Subsistence Rely on
Healthy Ocean Ecosystems
George Owletuck
Arctic Research Consortium of the United
States
April 29,2003
Alaska’s Ocean Environment
• The oceans off Alaska’s 33,000 miles of
coastline are some of the most
productive in the world, supporting an
extraordinary array of marine mammal
and seabird species.
• Alaska’s oceans are vitally important to
economic prosperity, biological diversity,
species survival, public recreation, and
cultural identity.
Photo: Sitka Convention & Visitors Bureau
Photo: Sitka Convention & Visitors Bureau
Alaska’s Ocean Environment
• The Bering Sea is home to at least
450 species of fish, crustaceans and
mollusks
• It is also home for over 50 species of
breeding seabirds and 25 species of
marine mammals.
US Fish and Wildlife Service
•
The Aleutian Islands have extensive
forests of various cold-water corals
and sea sponges
Redtree coral with eye rockfish
Alaska’s Ocean Environment
• Alaska’s ocean environment supports the largest fisheries in the United
States with groundfish catches in 2000 totaling 4.5 billion pounds - 50% of
total US landings.
• These groundfish fisheries have an estimated wholesale value of over $1
billion annually.
• Commercial salmon catches added another 600 million pounds in 2000,
representing 96% of total US salmon landings at a value of $246 million.
Alaska Natives Rely on Healthy Ocean Ecosystems
• For millennia, Alaska Native
subsistence survival depended upon
the bountiful resources of land and
sea. Natives held great reverence
for the animals, land and sea.
Bering Strait Eskimo ca. 1908-15.
• Native societies possess detailed
traditional knowledge of animals
and the environment.
• Traditional Knowledge is required
for successful hunting, fishing and
gathering.
TOKSOOK BAY Hunters ca. 1980
Agayulirararput:
Yup’ik Eskimo Way of Making Prayer
• Drumming and dancing are part of a
complex spiritual life which honors
the beings that make life possible in
the Arctic.
• Immersed in the wilderness of
Creation, one becomes increasingly
aware of the Creator over a life-time
of living the hunting, fishing and
gathering life ways.
• This acute awareness conveys the
sense that the Creator has established a
delicate balance in nature to sustain
the web of life.
Mary Ann Sundown dancing at the 2001 Dance Festival in
Bethel, Alaska
Social Role of Subsistence Activities
• In subsistence societies it is the
relations among people that wildlife
harvesting generates and sustains.
• Fish and wildlife harvesting are
critical for the socialization of
children, linking generations.
• Social values reinforce the proper
stewardship of land and sea resources.
Pulling a Beluga Whale onto Shore, Black River
Fish camp 1980.
Photo by James H. Barker.
Always Getting Ready
Picking berries near Yukon River
Economic Aspects of Subsistence
• Required tools: $230M is spent annually
on fish nets, rifles, snow machines,
boats, outboards, trucks, equipment and
supplies for subsistence activities.
• Subsistence users would pay up to $1.7
billion annually to continue hunting,
fishing, and gathering.
Mask representing driftwood. The black forehead
with white dots may represent the upper
skyworld with star-holes to the next universe.
The lower white half represents the human
world into which it is hoped the driftwood will
come.
_______________________________________
Fienup-Riordan, Ann. 1996. Agayuliyararput: Our Way of
Making Prayer. Seattle: University of Washington Press
• Approx. $40M dollars in retail purchases
are made by Alaska tourists annually for
Native arts made from subsistence
byproducts.
______________________________________________________________
University of Alaska Anchorage
Institute of Social and Economic Research
What’s the Economic Importance of Alaska’s Healthy Ecosystems?
Steve Holt March 2001
Impacts of Climate Change
• Thinning of sea ice and increased
open-water roughness, have made
hunting more difficult, more
dangerous, and less productive.
• According residents living in
coastal communities, the effect of
waves, wind, and ice have caused
serious erosion problems.
• Long term ecosystem shifts
displace the resources available for
subsistence, requiring communities
to change their practices or move.
_____________________________________________________
Climate Change Impacts on the United States
The Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change
Published in 2000
US Dept. Of Interior
Impacts of Contaminants
• Pollutants are appearing at
elevated levels in air, water, ice
and sediment in Alaska's Arctic.
• Pollutants concentrate in the
organs of fish and wildlife.
• They pose risks to people who
eat whales, seals, walrus, and
fish.
• Fetuses and nursing babies are
most vulnerable to the effects of
contaminants due to their
different physiology and
metabolism.
Fiona Siobhan Owletuck
4 months old
May 2001
______________________________________________________
"Contaminants in Alaska: Is America's Arctic at Risk?"
September 2000
Alaska Native Subsistence Life Ways Under Threat
• In the last two hundred years, the
Bering Sea has been over-exploited
through commercial; whaling,
commercial seal harvesting, and
industrial fishing.
• The Bering Sea Ecosystem, a 1996
report by the National Research Council
concludes that:
• "It seems extremely unlikely that the
productivity of the Bering Sea
ecosystem can sustain current rates of
human exploitation…”
__________________________________________________
National Research Council, "The Bering Sea Ecosystem,"
National Academy Press, 1996: 4.
Photos by Karen Ducey
Historic Overfishing by Foreign Trawlers
•
The largest disruption to the Bering Sea in the
last 40 years has been the industrialized fishing
fleets and the establishment of large-scale
fisheries.
•
In the seas off Alaska, modern factory fishing
started in the 1960s, when large Japanese and
Soviet factory stern-trawlers replaced the
smaller, less efficient side-trawlers.
•
Catches of Pacific ocean perch, Pacific herring
and yellowfin sole reached record levels by the
early 1960s,
•
Followed by collapses as each stock was
overfished.
•
As stocks of one species crashed, the fleets
shifted their fishing effort to another species.
____________________________________________________________________
1. B.A. Megrey and V.G. Wespestad, "Alaskan Ground Resources: 10 Years
of Management Under the Magnuson Fishery Conservation and Management Act,"
North American Journal of Fisheries Management, Vol.10, No.2, Spring 1990: 127.
2. B.A. Megrey and V.G. Wespestad, "Alaskan Ground Resources: 10 Years of
Management Under the Magnuson Fishery Conservation and Management Act,"
North American Journal of Fisheries Management,Vol.10, No.2, Spring 1990: 127, 134-36.
Whaling photo © Robin Culley 1993,
Factory trawler photos © Robert Visser 1994.
Bottom Trawling Damages Habitat
•A new study by the National Academy of
Sciences released March 18, 2002 says that bottom
trawling is killing vast numbers of marine animals.
•Coming after years of declining U.S. fisheries, the
report finds that trawling damages the habitat
where juvenile fishes hide from their predators.
•Recommendations include protecting essential
fish habitat
Illustration: Joe Shoulak
•Recommendations include changing gear types to
practice “clean” fishing
_____________________________________________________________
Effects of Trawling and Dredging on Seafloor Habitat
Committee on Ecosystem Effects of Fishing: Phase 1 -- Effects of Bottom Trawling on
Seafloor Habitats,
Ocean Studies Board, National Research Council
Available May 2002 from National Academy Press
Alaska’s Ocean Threats
ENDANGERED
• Listed as endangered, Steller sea lions have declined by 80%
over the previous thirty years in the Bering Sea and parts of
western and central Gulf of Alaska.
Gov. Tony Knowles Declares Western Alaska
Fishery Disasters
Estimated Fall Chum Salmon
Subsistence Harvest Yukon Area
250
•
•
•
•
Declared Economic Fish Disasters:
Kuskokwim River Watershed 1997,
1998, 2000, 2001
Yukon River Watershed 1997, 1998,
2000, 2001
Norton Sound Watershed 2000, 2001
Bristol Bay Watershed 1997, 1998, 2001
Fall Chum Salmon (Thousands)
Five Year Averages
211,303
200
167,900
150
145,524
125,253
130,860 129,258
107,808
95,141
100
89,940
76,882
62,901
50
18,920
1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000
Year
Alaska Department of Fish and Game Statistics:
Year 1987
211,303 Salmon
Year 2000
18,920 Salmon
Establish Arctic Marine Protected Areas
•There is clear evidence that human impacts such as over fishing, habitat
destruction, and pollution disrupt marine ecosystems and threaten the long-term
productivity of the seas.
•Declining yields in many fisheries and decay of treasured marine habitats, such
as coral reefs, has heightened interest in establishing a comprehensive system of
marine protected areas--areas designated for special protection to enhance the
management of marine resources.
•Therefore, there is an urgent need to evaluate how MPAs can be employed in the
United States and internationally as tools to support specific conservation needs
of marine and coastal waters.
Marine Protected Areas: Tools for Sustaining Ocean Ecosystem
Committee on the Evaluation, Design, and Monitoring of Marine Reserves
and Protected Areas in the United States, Ocean Studies Board,
National Research Council, 2001.
Partner Traditional Knowledge With Science
SEAL HUNTERS JOHN ABRAHAM AND GEORGE
CHIMUGAK STUDY ICE CONDITIONS AT TOKSOOK
BAY, 1980. Photo By James Barker
•
Most Arctic research does not include
northern aboriginal peoples' vast knowledge
of the natural environment. As a result,
northern research is ineffective (Sallenave
1994).
•
Indigenous people of the world possess an
immense knowledge of their environments,
based on millennia of living close to nature.
•
TK can provide qualitative information about
species presence or absence, time and place
of occurrence and abundance.
•
TK is in many instances better suited to
answer scientists' many questions (Freeman
1992).
Co-Management In Alaska
•Co-management involves the sharing of management responsibility and/or
authority of a resource between the government as owners of the resource, and
the local community as users of the resource (Berkes 1989; Pomeroy and
Williams 1994).
•“Co-management began in Alaska in 1977 when the Alaska Eskimo Whaling
Commission signed an agreement with National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration to manage the harvest of bowhead whales;
•The 1970 Endangered Species Act had classified the bowhead whale as
endangered with as few as 700 animals. The Eskimo whaling captains claimed
that there were more than 10 times that number. They stated that most of the
whales, which were only counted in open leads, were being missed and were
passing under the ice;
•NOAA considered the Eskimo traditional knowledge and launched a program to
get a better count. In 1998 the bowhead population was estimated to be 8,200
animals.” (Charles Johnson, Executive Director, Alaska Nanuuq Commission,
2002).
Policy and Research Recommendations:
• Recognize that Alaska Natives are part of the oceans ecosystems and have been
for millennia;
• Alaska Natives possess inherent Traditional Knowledge and community
responsibility that enable them to govern their own affairs and conduct
successful stewardship of fish and wildlife resources;
• Researchers consult with Alaska Natives through the partnership of Traditional
Knowledge on an equal footing with conventional science;
• Marine Protected Areas must be recognized as a valuable tool to maintain
ecosystem sustainability in the Arctic;
• Co-Management must be recognized as another effective tool of resource
management;
• Any research and management initiatives need to regard Alaska Native
subsistence life ways as sacrosanct.