Radio Script
1999

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Ecosystem Management
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STORY: Most fisheries are managed based on estimates and average catches, but often unexpected population swings surprise fishermen and managers. The science behind boom and bust is little understood because fish occupy a complex web of life hidden underwater from easy monitoring. Researchers at the Prince William Sound Science Center in Cordova, Alaska, are taking fisheries management deeper by developing models of the local marine environment. Center director Dr. Gary Thomas says research has shown the ecosystem to be full of surprises.

THOMAS: "Populations out there are very dynamic. I mean you have a change in a weather pattern, or a storm pattern, or maybe an upwelling--you can have an entire population along a coastline or in the sound completely redistribute in 24 hours. I mean they just, they respond immediately."

Thomas says physical factors like currents and temperature, along with basic biological census information, are absent from most current management models, hindering the efficiency of human harvests. Consider the Prince William Sound pollock population which, prior to the science center research following the Exxon Valdez oil spill, there was little known about.

THOMAS: "Our surveys out here suggest that they are the number one biomass in the sound. We have a pretty good idea that the biomass in Prince William Sound is much larger than any of the management agencies have given it credit for when they establish their harvest quotas."

Millions of dollars in grant money since the oil spill has paid for the science center's acoustical species monitoring techniques which, in overlay with information gathered on currents and other physical factors in Prince William Sound, have yielded an ecosystem model. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game only dreams about that kind of research, and Prince William Sound Area Management biologist Tim Joyce says current forecasting is marginal at best.

JOYCE: "Our forecasts are very, very broad and very, very general. They are not precise. We don't have the information to make them precise--it's just not available. The money is not available to go out and collect it. So yes, there's always the chance things may not be what they seem to be."

That kind of variability can mean unanticipated crashes like those seen in the early 1990s with Prince William Sound herring and pink salmon. Not all biologists believe anything as complex and dynamic as an underwater ecosystem can ever be understood to predict fish populations accurately, but Joyce doesn't discount the aspiration and thinks it could work if there is a long-term financial commitment to monitoring. That's something the science center's Thomas says will require a philosophical leap, beginning at the educational level.

THOMAS: "Our fisheries schools today, the places where fisheries scientists are coming from, are really technologically deficient. I mean there is very little engineering or physics that are required in the whole background of a fisheries scientist, and so in some cases you might even say there is a flaw in the educational base that we're providing for fisheries scientists to come out of."

Dr. Thomas says interdisciplinary perspectives like the ecosystem approach to fisheries management are hard to sell and maintain at departmentalized universities. Thomas is just beginning the process of peer review on the Prince William Sound Science Center's ecosystem management work, and he expects it to take a while for the concept to gain support.

OUTRO: For Arctic Science Journeys, in Valdez, Alaska, this is Dan Bross.