# Presentation: 941934

## Steve Murawski, Ph.D.

Director of Scientific Programs & 
Chief Science Advisor
NOAA Fisheries Service
&
Ecosystem Observations Program Manager

**Ocean Ecosystem Studies in Alaska**

**Steve Murawski, Ph.D.**
**Director of Scientific Programs & **
**Chief Science Advisor**
**NOAA Fisheries Service**
**&**
**Ecosystem Observations Program Manager**

## Gulf of Alaska

- Navarin

- W. Bering

- Commander Is.

## The Alaskan Ocean Ecosystem

## Bering Sea-Aleutian Islands 

**Groundfish Catch 25-Year History **
***(in thousands of mt)***

## Description of Ecosystem Science Issues in Alaska 

- Bering Sea: Implementing an ecosystem approach to management
- Drivers:
- Fishing participants desire continued high fish production
- Alaska Native subsistence communities
- Increased attention to biodiversity and bycatch issues for nontarget species
- Pro-active fishery management council
- Resource management issues
- High pollock/declining crab production
- Declining or low levels of some marine mammals and seabirds: Steller sea lions and northern fur seals, harbor seals, North Pacific right whales, short-tailed albatross
- Role of warming in the Bering Sea in changing ecosystem production in space and time

## Research Priorities for Ecosystem Studies in Alaska

**In Ecosystem-Level Measures**

**Climate and Fishing Effects on Forage**
**Species Dynamics**

**Relation between Climate and **
**Ecosystem Production**

-  **System for prioritizing research **
**On non-target species**

-  **Defining Spatial-temporal Needs **
**Of Predators**

-  **Improving predictions of multi-species**
**And ecosystem models**

**Assessing Genetic Diversity**

-  **LH, Distribution, Functional role**
**Of HAPC Biota**

## Organization of ScienceProgram 

** **
**Alaska Fisheries Science Center**
-  Surveys and stock assessments (fish, shellfish, and mammals)
-  Gear research to reduce bycatch
-  Monitoring to characterize catch, bycatch, and fishery interactions with                                                                                                                                                                     	protected   species
-  Habitat investigations and effects of fishing on habitat
-  Food web studies, models, ecosystem indicators and assessments
-  Recruitment, fishery interaction and process studies
-  Socioeconomics data collection, modeling, assessments
**Research Coordination**
- Internal:   **Habitat and Ecological Processes Research Matrix Team, AFSC Board of Directors**
- AFSC/PMEL: **Fisheries Oceanography Coordinated Investigations Management Team **(20yr history)
- ADFG crab, herring, salmon mgt. : Interagency planning teams (crab): NPAFC (pelagic ecosystem): PICES (ecosystem)
- Interagency/multi-institutional: **Bering Sea and Climate Change Working Group**
- NOAA Fisheries: **FATE** (Fisheries and the Environment)
- NPFMC plan teams and SSC

## Contributions by NOAA LOs

- OAR: Pacific Marine Environmental Lab (PMEL), Modeling of water mass movements in relation to climatology; NURP submersible studies of cold-water corals
- NWS: Surface winds, routine data buoy information, surface and marine temperature data
- NESDIS: Satellite oceanography (surface temperatures, surface color, wind stress calculations, ocean heat indices)
- NMAO: Fleet operations of vessels: *Miller Freeman*, *Oscar Dyson*, others, aircraft
- NOS: Nearshore Monitoring of Environmental Conditions, AOOS
- NMFS: Sampling of fishes, marine mammals, seabirds, lower trophic levels, modeling studies

## Science Products: Observations

- Bering-Aleutian Salmon International Survey

**Notes:**
• Observation is an essential component of NOAA applied research and its climate and ecosystems programs.
• Observing includes remote sensing from space and from moorings and drifters, shipboard sampling, land-based surveys.
• NOAA data sources for North Pacific climate and ecosystem programs are:
- NOAA  Fisheries: stock assessment and marine mammal surveys (Middle and Bottom Charts)
- NOAA  Research: hydrographic cruises, moorings and Argo (Top Chart)
- Specialized programs such as EcoFOCI
- New partnerships created from AOOS
- NOAA  Coastal Ocean Program sponsored research
- NOAA  Weather: Station and buoy observations, ice maps, NCEP analyses

NPCREP uses and integrates all of these.

Mooring figure (top chart) is a compilation of all FOCI moorings ever deployed, some for as long  as 10 years.  This is not the density of the present monitoring system.

## Slide 10

## Slide 11

## Slide 12

## Changing climate: 

**Changing climate: **
**Bering Sea ice extent **
**and duration has changed and impacts summer distribution of pollock**

***Percent ice coverage  ***

**8**

**Notes:**
THE BERING SEA IS WARMING; ICE NO LONGER PENETRATES INTO THE SOUTHEAST

THIS HAS IMPORTANT CONSEQUENCES FOR THE ECOSYSTEM AND ITS ECONOMIC RESOURCES

Ice is formed to the north of the area shown on this figure and blown into the region.  Ice has been absent the last four years in the southeast.  

In the bottom panel you can also see the difference in duration that ice occupied the area in the shaded box on the top panel.  In the early to mid  1970s the ice arrived early and stayed late.  In the late 1970s, when the PDO also switch sign, ice begin to be less persistent in the southeast.  Again this has important consequences for the ecosystem. 

## Bering Sea/Aleutian Islands Status and Trends

**Bering Sea/Aleutian Islands Status and Trends**

**Notes:**
In the Ecosystem Assessment, I’ve included a table of anomalies for physical, biological and human impact time series.  
This is a visual tool that displays many of the time series that are included in the 2nd and 3rd sections of the Ecosystem Considerations report.
This is method where we can take a lot of indicators and look at trends over time and
this approach is being more widely used in the U.S. and internationally.
The time series presented here were chosen because of their importance in the ecosystem and most are sensitive, that is they wouldn’t have too much of a lag behind climate shifts.  
It is not a complete list, yet.  
Each time series is normalized over the entire time period for which there is data, however, I have only presented the data from 1970 to 2004, because most time series start in the 1970’s.  
The time series are arranged on the y-axis to group together time series that show similar responses.  
At a glance you can see that there were shifts in these time series that occurred around 1977 and 1989 in the Bering Sea/Aleutian Islands.  
For example, surface winter air temperature anomalies were negative prior to 1977 and generally positive afterwards.
Recruit per spawning biomass anomalies for winter spawning flatfish were positive until the late 1980’s after which they became negative.

## Examples: Indicators

**Fish community size spectrum**

**Seabird population trends**

**Environmental fluctuations**

**Total catch and trophic level of the catch**

**Status of structural habitat biota**

- Science Products & Activities

## Description of Science Products

- Models
- Single species stock assessments with adequate precaution
- Regional economic models
- Multispecies and ecosystem models
- Conceptual, recruitment, lower trophic level models, transport models
- Long-term research and monitoring
- Habitat and ecological processes
- Animal distribution, movement, condition, feeding behavior, production relative to oceanography/fishing/prey
- Revise service delivery model for NP groundfish Observer program
- Advice provided
- Annual ecosystem considerations SAFE section to NPFMC
- Annual economic/groundfish/marine mammal stock assessment reports to NPFMC
- PICES or NPAFC reports/committees/wg/task teams
- Scientific input to AKR: EIS/EA, Recovery Plans, Section 7 Consultations, Biological Opinions, Marine Mammal Co-Management

**Numerical Biophysical Predictive Models**

**Biological Food Base **
**Energetic Models**

**Single Species Recruitment Models**

**Climate and Predator/Prey Research to Improve Stock Predictions**

**Notes:**
Quantitative prediction provides specific conclusions on the status and trends of populations.  For example, the Bering Sea will warm by 1.5 ° C, the pollock population will move 100 km northward, and increase by 20%.  Similarly, snow crab will move 200 km northward and will decrease by 50%.  
Coupled biophysical models (left panel; Al Hermann/PMEL & Sarah Hinckley/AFSC) link changes in the physical environment (atmosphere and upper ocean) with the survival and recruitment of early life history stages of fish.  They can generate quantitative predictions and indices.
 Energetic models (e.g., Ecosim, top right panel; Kerin Aydin/AFSC) examine how climate-induced changes in the biological part of the ecosystem (for example competition and predation) affect growth and production of living marine resources.
Stock assessment models (e.g., Ricker curve; bottom right panel; Anne Hollowed/AFSC) examine and predict how climate-induced changes will affect the production and year-class strength of target populations.
- Immediately after the 1978 Regime shift (or phase transition) Arrowtooth began to experience very high recruitment as a function of spawning biomass.  This went on for about 10 years until the spawning biomass became much higher.  After that, recruitment was much lower due to predation by adults.
- Arrowtooth flounder are now a major predator in the system and adversely affect the recruitment of many fish species including pollock.
- Thus the two different curves implicity link climate-induced forcing to the status of a major ecosystem component.  NPCREP seeks to make the implicit, explicit by including physical forcing/environmental data into assessment models.
Our principal audience is the North Pacific Fishery Management Council who use these predictions to help engage in an ecosystem approach to management. 

##  Examples: Models

**Numerical Biophysical Predictive Models**

**Biological Food Base Energetic Models**

**Single Species Recruitment Models**

*Wilderbuer *et al. *2002*

**Notes:**
Quantitative prediction provides specific conclusions on the status and trends of populations.  For example, the Bering Sea will warm by 1.5 ° C, the pollock population will move 100 km northward, and increase by 20%.  Similarly, snow crab will move 200 km northward and will decrease by 50%.  
Coupled biophysical models (left panel; Al Hermann/PMEL & Sarah Hinckley/AFSC) link changes in the physical environment (atmosphere and upper ocean) with the survival and recruitment of early life history stages of fish.  They can generate quantitative predictions and indices.
 Energetic models (e.g., Ecosim, top right panel; Kerin Aydin/AFSC) examine how climate-induced changes in the biological part of the ecosystem (for example competition and predation) affect growth and production of living marine resources.
Stock assessment models (e.g., Ricker curve; bottom right panel; Anne Hollowed/AFSC) examine and predict how climate-induced changes will affect the production and year-class strength of target populations.
- Immediately after the 1978 Regime shift (or phase transition) Arrowtooth began to experience very high recruitment as a function of spawning biomass.  This went on for about 10 years until the spawning biomass became much higher.  After that, recruitment was much lower due to predation by adults.
- Arrowtooth flounder are now a major predator in the system and adversely affect the recruitment of many fish species including pollock.
- Thus the two different curves implicity link climate-induced forcing to the status of a major ecosystem component.  NPCREP seeks to make the implicit, explicit by including physical forcing/environmental data into assessment models.

## Ecosystem-basedManagement Actions  

**TAC less than ABC for individual stocks.**
**OY Cap on total groundfish yield.**
**No target fisheries on forage species.**
**Short-tailed albatross take restrictions, Seabird bycatch mitigation devices.**
**No fishing in Steller sea lion foraging area and minimum biomass threshold for sea lion prey.**
**Trawl closures, bottom trawling restrictions.**
**Bycatch and discard controls.**

**Conservative single-species targets**

**CAP on TOTAL TARGET CATCH**
**BSAI Total Yield < 2 million mt**

## Steller Sea Lion Protection Measures

**No Trawl Areas and Seasonal Closures**

**Steller Sea Lion Protection Measures**

## Cold-water Coral Research 

**and Protection**

**Habitat of Particular Concern**

## Relationships toNon-Ecosystem Goal Products

- Climate Goal
- Objective: Understand and predict the consequences of climate variability and change on marine ecosystems
- North Pacific Climate Regimes and Ecosystem Productivity (NPCREP) Matrix Managed Program (AFSC/PMEL)
- Data archives and products for the public
- PMEL EPIC online oceanographic data retrieval system
- PMEL regime shift detection calculator
- Ocean color (NASA), SST (NOAA Satellite Active Archive), sea ice (NOAA Sea Ice Center); barometric pressure, winds, radiation (NOAA NWS)
- NPCREP ecosystem indicators

## The Future – Case Study

- Future directions for Bering Sea ecosystem research
- Enhance observation network
- Develop/enhance tools to synthesize or integrate large numbers of metrics
- Test, confirm, or modify existing hypotheses about ecosystem function
- Incorporate environmental data into assessments and forecasts of species/community/ecosystems status
- Further linking of climate/biological/economic models
-  Ideas for improving Bering Sea ecosystem research
- Expand studies on the impact of the reduction in sea ice over the next 20 years
- More funding for basic research (lower trophic level observations, habitat and process studies)
- Additional days at sea
- Revise the service delivery model for the NPGFO Program
- Opportunities for greater integration of Bering Sea research
- NPFMC move towards EAF and EAM
- Bering Sea and Climate Change Working Group
- Expand research opportunities with Univ. AK Fairbanks

## How to Take these Lessons Learned Back to Your Office

- Someone else in NOAA is likely to have data relevant to your problem – Network!
- Don’t wait for senior managers to initiate – pick up the phone (its better than an e-mail)
- Look for Projects that appeal to the Goal Teams in achieving strategic missions– the “Matrix” is highly supportive of NOAA outcomes, not just LO outcomes
- NOAA’s Program managers are there to serve you, they need your creativity to realize “One NOAA” mission goals

## and remember......

FISH is not a 
4-letter Word!

- FISH is not a
- 4-letter Word!