Snow Crab Catches, Numbers Of Fur Seals, Seabirds Collapsing In Bering Sea - ADN

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But the nation’s richest ocean ecosystem is in the midst of a major upheaval, and scientists suspect global warming is at least partly to blame. Researchers like those who spent a month this spring on the University of Washington’s Thompson are trying to figure out what the future holds for the region called America’s “fish basket.”

Crabbers like Baker are already feeling the effects. In the past six years, snow crab catches have dropped 85 percent. Most other crab species are in a similar slump. Overfishing is probably a factor — but not the only one. Biologists also have documented a northward shift of crab populations, away from warming waters in the traditional fishing grounds of the southern Bering Sea.

Fur seal numbers are dwindling despite a 20-year-old ban on commercial hunting. Steller sea lions were declared endangered in 1997. Seabirds that once flocked to the region by the millions are in precipitous decline. The changes coincide with rising water temperatures and shrinking sea ice cover. “In the Bering Sea … rapid climate change is apparent, and its impacts significant,” scientists concluded in the 2004 Arctic Climate Impact Assessment.

Not all the impacts are negative — at least from a human perspective. Warmer water favors some species, including pollock, the “money” fish that dwarfs all other fisheries worldwide and winds up primarily in imitation crab, fish sticks and fish burgers. A fleet of ships, mostly from Washington, mines nearly 3 billion pounds of pollock from the Bering Sea each year — the equivalent of 10 pounds for every man, woman and child in the United States. “This is not a clear doomsday story,” said George Hunt, a University of Washington ecologist who monitored birds during the Thompson cruise. “If temperatures continue to increase, there’s a better-than-even chance pollock fishing will improve.” But there also are indications the Bering Sea’s fabled productivity may be diminishing — and that sustained warming could bring nasty surprises. Stocks of most other fish species, including yellowfin sole and Greenland turbot, have been dropping since the late 1970s and federal biologists warned in a report last year that “substantial reductions in total catches may be necessary in the near future.”

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