It is very interesting to know how the climate affects minute sea creatures and the lucrative fishery. Marine scientists were aboard RV Thomas G. Thompson, which was cruising in the Bering Sea, west of Alaska. They dropped the net to the sea floor and then hauled it back up to examine the catch. Pinchuk, a Russian working at the University of Alaska’s Seward Marine Center, had harvested a whole zoo of minute animals, including larval fish, squid, crabs and octopuses, plus amphipods, copepods and krill.
He said that these miniature zooplankton form critically important middle links in the food web, helping to sustain the rich life of the Bering Sea. The region provides half of the commercial seafood caught in the United States annually, including cod, sole, flounder, salmon and crabs.
It is found that the Bering Sea yields one million tonnes of pollock each year, amounting to one billion dollars. But the pollock population has begun to fall and scientists are concerned that climate change could put further stress on the fishery. For the past three years, Pinchuk has been studying this region as part of the six-year, US$52-million Bering Sea Project, a collaborative effort between the US National Science Foundation (NSF) and the North Pacific Research Board.
At its heart, the Bering Sea Project is an attempt to understand how climate change may affect the region’s fisheries, by studying the ecosystem from top to bottom. Researchers hope this strategy will help fishery managers to protect the pollock and other species as the Bering Sea warms.
