Trouble in the North Pacific: Sea Lions vs. Fisheries

by Kenneth Stump
Pinniped Fisheries Project, a subproject of the International Marine Mammal Project

The fertile seas off Alaska sustain a glorious panoply of marine species and the largest fisheries in the US, worth $1 billion annually. But declines in seal, sea lion, seabird, crab and fish stocks since the 1970s suggest that the limits of sustainability have been exceeded in the North Pacific. The debate has come to focus on the endangered Steller sea lion as an indicator species.

Known to the native Aleuts as the sea-bear, this largest sea lion in the world ranges across the North Pacific Rim from northern Japan to California. In the past 30 years, its numbers have plummeted 80 to 90 percent in the center of its range - from Prince William Sound through the Aleutians. The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) estimates a population decline from 140,000 in 1960 to 17,000 in 1998, and fears that the western Alaska population may be headed toward extinction.

The likeliest explanation for the decline is lack of food. Like northern fur seals, Pacific harbor seals, spotted and ringed seals, major groundfish species and some of the world's largest breeding colonies of kittiwakes, murres, and puffins, Steller sea lions rely on walleye pollock (Theragra chalcogramma).

Trawl fisheries, dominated by the giant Alaska pollock fisheries, are extracting on a locally unprecedented scale. Since 1964, nearly 90 billion pounds of pollock have been mined from the eastern Bering Sea. With high-tech fishing capacity vastly exceeding the available stocks, competition in the industry has grown fierce.

Unregulated pollock fishing in critical sea lion foraging habitat soared to record levels in the mid-1990s. Much of the winter catch was concentrated in pollock spawning grounds near the Steller population center. Overcapitalized and debt-driven, the pollock fishing industry is increasingly dependent on harvesting lucrative roe along with the spawning pollock.

The North Pacific Fishery Management Council, charged with maintaining fisheries in federal waters off Alaska, is reluctant to address the issue of fisheries vs. sea lions. Instead, it demands that environmental advocates prove that current fishing levels are a threat.

In spring 1998, Greenpeace, the American Oceans Campaign, and Sierra Club Alaska joined forces to sue the NMFS under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) for failing to protect the critical foraging habitat of the Steller sea lion. Since lack of food is the problem, they argued, it makes no sense to allow major fisheries to target pollock - the Stellers' prime prey - within sea lions' critical habitat. The ESA requires that "reasonable and prudent alternative (RPA) measures" be taken to avoid inflicting any "adverse modification" on the critical habitat of a species.

In December 1998, the NMFS sent shockwaves through the fishing industry by agreeing with the plaintiffs representing sea lions that fishery operations did create a situation of "food web competition." In July 1998, US District Court Judge Thomas Zilly upheld this finding and ordered NMFS to revise its RPA. The Court's decision shifted the debate from whether there is a problem to what must be done about it.

Greenpeace Oceans Campaign director Gerry Leape commented, "The ESA says the endangered species must receive the benefit of the doubt. We didn't think NMFS could pass the red-face test under the ESA, given the facts of this case."

In the latest version of its sea lion RPA measures, the NMFS proposed relying on the pollock industry's promise to change its operations, rather than imposing regulations to reduce the fishery's impact on the Stellers. Under the NMFS' proposed regulations, less than one-quarter of the Steller sea lion's critical habitat would be off-limits to the pollock fleet in any given season. This would keep the pollock harvest levels about as high as the overfished 1990s status quo.

"The Fisheries Service has consistently put the interests of the pollock industry ahead of sea lion conservation," says attorney Janis Searles of Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund in Juneau. She charges that the NMFS's RPA proposal "is geared to avoid impacts to the industry rather than to avoid harm to the Stellers. It represents little change from the status quo condition that prompted the agency to conclude [that there was] jeopardy and adverse modification in the first place."

On January 25, Judge Zilly ruled that NMFS Biological Opinion (BiOp 2) was inadequate. "BiOp 2 fails to critically analyze how core management measures ... impact endangered species." He noted that the cumulative effects section "contains no analysis whatsoever ... Having failed to live up to its obligations under the law, NMFS once again invites the Court to withhold judicial review while it undertakes to do what should have been done long ago. The Court declines the invitation."

The Steller sea lion and the North Pacific food web both depend on the pollock stocks. The only hope for rescuing the Steller sea lion from extinction and Alaska's marine ecosystems from collapse is to stop the relentless assault of factory fishing.

What You Can Do Pollock shows up on supermarket shelves as imitation crabmeat (surimi) or frozen fish sticks, and in fast-food chains as fish and chips or fish fillet sandwiches. You can refuse to buy these pollock products. See the Earth Island Institute website for more information.

Kenneth Stump is a resource consultant and writer living in Seattle.