Carbon and the Future of Seafood
Ocean acidification is a serious threat to Alaska fisheries
Reprinted from Pacific Fishing magazine, July 2016 issue.
Among the many well-known threats to Alaska from climate change, ocean acidification may be the most serious facing our state’s fisheries, with recent studies predicting drastic declines in the number and health of our crabs.
As a Copper River salmon fisherman who grew up harvesting crab and herring in Prince William Sound, I’ve been following this issue with a sense of alarm that borders on sheer terror. The health of Alaska’s environment and economy depends on reducing the human-induced carbon dioxide emissions that are causing the oceans to rise and become more acidic.
And that means burning less fossil fuel and giving up on dangerous offshore drilling projects like the ones in Cook Inlet and Chukchi and Beaufort seas that the Obama administration is proposing for its new five-year offshore energy plan, to the disappointment of many.
I’ve experienced how long it takes impacted ecosystems to recover. Crustaceans such as crab and shrimp in the Gulf of Alaska took a heavy hit in the major 1964 earthquake, one they’re still recovering from. On the 25th anniversary of the ’64 quake, we had to endure the disastrous effects of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill that still linger today.
As the crab, shrimp and razor clams slowly make a comeback over 50 years later, recovering from the ’64 quake and the Exxon spill 27 years ago, now we face the specter of ocean warming and acidification.
Earlier this year, a set of new studies by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration concluded that ocean acidification caused by climate change could cause a decline in numbers of Alaska crab species and prevent young crabs from reaching maturity.
We must wonder if our oceans will continue to provide for us — and for the rest of a country that gets 60 percent of its seafood from Alaska fisheries — and if so, for how long.
In Alaska, ocean acidification will also affect salmon fisheries. One of the most important food sources for salmon are small, fragile sea snails called pteropods, which are highly vulnerable to ocean acidification. Pteropods comprise 25 percent of the diet of juvenile pink salmon. Ocean acidification is already reducing the abundance of these sea snails and it could have devastating consequences for pink salmon fisheries, one of the most productive salmon fisheries in Alaska.
Scientists working on ocean acidification are predicting that some fish species may cease to exist in Alaska around 2100 if nothing changes drastically in ocean management policies and the amount of carbon dioxide spewed into the air, about 30 percent of which gets absorbed by the ocean.
“The situation doesn’t look good,” Dr. Bob Foy, head of the Kodiak Lab for Alaska Fisheries Science Center, said in a recent presentation on how acidification is hurting shell development in crabs and other shellfish.
Research is lagging way behind, so Alaska’s thriving commercial fishing and subsistence way of life is in jeopardy. We can all do our part by demanding that the state and federal governments, along with private philanthropists, corporations, and foundations, increase funding for ocean acidification research and mitigation.
But the biggest single thing we can do is to become leaders in the global movement to address climate change. Alaska and the fishing industry on the front lines of this struggle and our way of life depends on moving quickly into a clean energy future.
Indigenous leaders, corporations, government, scientists, industry, and environmental groups, including fishermen and fishing organizations, need to come together as one voice and actively take a stand now, before it is too late.
Dune Lankard is the Alaska representative for the Center for Biological Diversity, and an Eyak Athabaskan and lifelong resident and subsistence and commercial fisherman.
