Word: pollack
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That's not just academic information. For as the seals and other marine mammals go, so goes the whole Bering Sea ecosystem. Spanning the oceanic divide between the U.S. and Russia, it is one of the richest and most commercially productive marine environments on earth, teeming with pollack and halibut, fur seals and Steller's sea lions, horn puffins and murres. The seals and seabirds depend on catching fish, and so do humans. More than 2,000 boats from the U.S., Russia, Japan, Norway, China, Poland and the Koreas haul in an annual catch worth roughly $1 billion. The portion...
...species is more important to man and beast than pollack, the No. 1 ingredient of frozen fish sticks and the fish items served by chains like Burger King and Long John Silver. Each year the Bering Sea yields 4 billion lbs. of this bottom-dwelling creature, making the pollack business the biggest fish harvest in the world...
...surface, that business is healthy: the pollack catch has stayed near record levels. But signs of overfishing and an ailing ecosystem can be seen higher up in the food chain. The fur-seal population has not increased despite a longstanding ban on commercial hunting. The number of Steller's sea lions, which feed mostly on pollack, has plunged 80% since the 1970s, and seabirds such as the red-legged kittiwake are also in trouble...
...pollack harvest may be huge, but that doesn't mean the fish is still abundant everywhere. If commercial fishermen overfish a spot near nursing sea lions, both mothers and pups can starve. That's why the Trustees for Alaska, a public interest law firm, has sued the U.S. government for failing to protect areas vital to endangered marine mammals. The group's litigation director, Peter Van Tuyn, points out that in southeast Alaskan waters, where there is little industrial fishing of pollack, the sea lion population has held up relatively well. And fur seals in the Pribilofs have done better...
Less fortunate are other creatures that get in the fishermen's way. Dorothy Childers, executive director of the Alaska Marine Conservation Council, notes that fishing boats aiming to catch pollack dump halibut and salmon over the side and that the value of wasted fish in the Bering Sea is equivalent to 25% of the revenues from the entire fishery. Many trawlers drag nets and other gear across the sea floor, destroying the habitat of all the animals that live on the bottom. International agreements restrict the size of fishing nets, but environmental groups like the World Wildlife Fund urge stronger...