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.

• The Aleutian Islands have extensive forests of various cold-water corals and sea sponges

Redtree coral with eye rockfish

US Fish and Wildlife Service

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.

• Native societies possess detailed traditional knowledge of animals and the environment.

• Traditional Knowledge is required for successful hunting, fishing and

gathering.

Bering Strait Eskimo ca. 1908-15.

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.

• 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 ResearchWhat’s the Economic Importance of Alaska’s Healthy Ecosystems?

Steve Holt March 2001

            

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

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 ChangePublished 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 Owletuck4 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.

Whaling photo © Robin Culley 1993,Factory trawler photos © Robert Visser 1994.

____________________________________________________________________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.

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

•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

Illustration: Joe Shoulak

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

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

Alaska Department of Fish and Game Statistics: Year 1987 211,303 Salmon Year 2000 18,920 Salmon

Estimated Fall Chum SalmonSubsistence Harvest Yukon Area

211,303

167,900

145,524

107,808

76,882

125,253130,860 129,258

95,141

62,901

89,940

18,920

50

100

150

200

250

1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000

Year

Fall Chum Salmon (Thousands)

Five Year Averages

Establish Arctic Marine Protected Areas

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.

•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.

Partner Traditional Knowledge With Science

• 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).

SEAL HUNTERS JOHN ABRAHAM AND GEORGE CHIMUGAK STUDY ICE CONDITIONS AT TOKSOOK BAY, 1980. Photo By James Barker

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.