<img height="1" width="1" style="display:none" src="https://www.facebook.com/tr?id=192888919167017&amp;ev=PageView&amp;noscript=1">
Thursday, March 28, 2024
March 28, 2024

Linkedin Pinterest

Fishery council strives to protect marine ecosystems

By Kathryn D. Sullivan
Published: April 10, 2016, 6:01am

The last few years on the West Coast have given us a glimpse of how climate change may alter the future of our oceans and coasts. An unusual “warm blob” of high-temperature water dominated the North Pacific, followed by the ongoing El Niño pattern that is keeping offshore temperatures warm, rainfall abundant, and rivers high.

During a recent visit to the West Coast, I was fortunate enough to spend time on the water with Oregon fishermen and hear firsthand about the changes and challenges facing the industry in the Pacific Northwest.

We are seeing warm-water species in places they’ve rarely been before and absent from their conventional territory. More importantly, the unusual conditions are likely to severely affect salmon populations and fishing, depress the production of other important species such as sardine and whiting, and generally alter the patterns of our marine ecosystems coastwide.

Other impacts of this El Niño have included higher sea levels, greater erosion, and interruptions of Columbia River ship traffic.

This is why NOAA’s fisheries laboratories on the West Coast developed a new action plan that lays the scientific groundwork to track and understand how climate change affects West Coast fisheries and marine ecosystems. Part of NOAA Fisheries’ national Climate Science Strategy, the action plan will help all of us better anticipate and respond to changes in ways that protect and sustain these valuable fisheries and ecosystems.

The insights we gain should be of particular value to the work of the Pacific Fishery Management Council, the citizen organization that develops fishery management plans for more than 120 West Coast species, from salmon to sharks. The council, meeting this weekend in Vancouver, was created by the Magnuson Stevens Act, the landmark law that governs federal fisheries management and is now marking its 40th year.

Fisheries managers must adjust to the climate changes that affect the fisheries they govern. The MSA assures that those adjustments are based on good science and data, which come from sources such as stock assessments conducted by our research ships in West Coast waters.

The MSA’s 40th anniversary is a good time to take stock of its success. About 20 years ago, 10 different species of West Coast groundfish were considered overfished, and the fleet was in crisis. Today, five of those species are fully rebuilt, opening new harvest opportunities, and several more stocks are very close to rebuilt.

The council recently demonstrated the great foresight inherent in the MSA when it developed ecosystem-based protections under four West Coast fishery management plans. These protections track and seek to protect the food web which supports our commercially important species — those fish that are important for the marine ecosystem, like herring, smelt and many squid. The council also developed an overall ecosystem plan, and NOAA Fisheries is committed to tracking its key ecosystem indicators every year so the council can make more informed decisions across the board.

The council’s recent steps under the MSA, combined with additional scientific horsepower under our new climate action plan, put us in a very strong position to understand and adjust to further changes in our oceans. This is a good thing, because the “blob” and El Niño and the impacts they have brought to the West Coast will likely not be the last changes that we face.


Dr. Kathryn D. Sullivan is the Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere and Administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). She is an oceanographer and the first American woman to walk in space.

Loading...