NOAA Fisheries wants public to weigh in on climate change studies of Alaska’s marine waters

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is seeking public input to help guide its climate-change research in waters off Alaska.

Members of the public interested in having input on the future of federal research on Alaska’s fisheries face a deadline next week. Comments will be accepted through July 29 on plans drafted by NOAA’s Alaska Fisheries Science Center for research through 2024 in the three Alaska oceanic regions: the Gulf of Alaska, the Eastern Bering Sea and the Arctic waters of the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas.

The plans stem from NOAA Fisheries’ Climate Science Strategy, originally issued in 2015. Under that strategy, NOAA Fisheries has organized research in the nation’s “large marine ecosystem” areas.

The Alaska Fisheries Science Center issued a regional cliamte science action plan for the Bering Sea in 2016, and two years later, it issued a regional science plan for the Gulf of Alaska, said Maggie Mooney-Seus, a spokesperson for the center.

The regional climate science action plan for the Chukchi and Beaufort seas, currently in draft form, is a new addition to the program, Mooney-Seus said by email.

“The draft regional action plans contain current research activities and recommendations for additional needed research from the science center’s perspective,” she said. “We welcome input from Alaska communities and stakeholders on other areas of marine research that should be undertaken to better understand Alaska marine ecosystems and how they are being affected by changing ocean conditions.”

The draft Chukchi-Beaufort plan expresses some urgency on issues like changes to seasonal migration patterns, known as migratory phenology, and the exchange of nutrients from upper to lower ocean layers, known as pelagic-benthic coupling.

“The need to take action is clear. Climate change in the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas is driving rapid decreases in summertime sea-ice extent, resulting in (among other things): poleward movement of commercial fishes from the adjacent Bering Sea ecosystem; changes in migratory phenology and distribution for bowhead and beluga whales; opportunities for subsistence hunting by Alaska Native communities; and likely shifts in pelagic-benthic coupling and resulting ecosystem productivity,” the draft plan’s executive summary says.

The draft Bering Sea plan includes over 50 research activities to be continued, enhanced and developed, that plan’s executive summary says. Much of the work is oriented to management of some of the world’s biggest commercial fisheries. The plan “identifies areas of needed research to enable managers and fishery dependent communities to better respond to climate variability and change and support the delivery of fishery and climate decision support products needed by the North Pacific Fishery Management Council,” the executive summary says.

The draft plan for Gulf of Alaska climate research addresses similar concerns, but there are some site-specific elements to it, including recommendations for continued study of heat effects on juvenile Pacific cod, a fish species that has crashed in the region, and more study of the impact of “major environmental anomalies” on the endangered Cook Inlet beluga whale population, that plan’s executive summary says.

Instructions on submitting public comments were published in the Federal Register.

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