Arctic fisheries are going a lot of change due to climate. The team led by Professor Daniel Paul of UBC’s Fisheries Centre and Department of Earth and Ocean Sciences, said that the fish catches in the Arctic totaled 950,000 tons from 1950 through 2006, compared to the 12,700 tons reported by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.
The area of concern is the FAO’s Fisheries Statistical Area 18, which covers arctic coastal areas in Northern Siberia, Alaska’s Arctic and the Canadian Arctic. The UBC researchers compiled limited government reports, plus anthropological records of indigenous population activities as part of their effort.
Dirk Zeller, a senior researcher, states that ineffective reporting, due to governance issues and a lack of credible data on small scale fisheries, has given us a false sense of comfort that the Artic is still a pristine frontier when it comes to fisheries. Similarly while Canada reported no harvests to the FAO, the research team found that commercial and small scale fishery harvests amounted to 94,000 tons for the same period. Pauly said that this research confirms that there is already fishing pressure in this region.
