An Ill Tide Up North

By Eugene Linden/The Pribilof Islands

"Fall down and you're history," says veterinarian Terry Springer as we crawl out on a rickety catwalk over a beach in Alaska's Pribilof Islands. Below us, thousands of fur seals flop around in a frenzy. The 600-lb. bulls herd their harems to protect them from rival males emerging from the brisk waters of the Bering Sea. As the big males toss the 110-lb. females around like beach toys, my first thought is that male fur seals have not yet embraced feminism. Springer, though, has no time for such anthropomorphic musing. The Colorado State University scientist is there to retrieve dead pups, which he gingerly extracts from the seal-covered shore by snagging them with a noose on a long pole. He'll take the tiny corpses back to a lab for autopsies. The work will tell him what ailed the pups when they died--and give him clues to the health of the entire fur-seal population.

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 taken off the shores of Alaska alone amounts to one-half the sea life caught by commercial fishing vessels in U.S. waters.

But will the bounty last? Since the majority of the world's fisheries are in a state of collapse, as too many boats chase too few fish, conservationists fear the same fate for the Bering Sea, the last great refuge of marine abundance. Competition among countries for the rights to fish certain sectors of the sea is already fierce and could turn violent, as it has elsewhere in the world. The Russians have severely depleted fish stocks in their zone, and the international area open to all boats, called the Doughnut Hole, has been nearly stripped of commercial fish.

No 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.

On the 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.

The 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 than sea lions, perhaps because they have a more varied diet.

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 action: enforcing a new agreement to stop bottom trawling for pollack, reducing the pressure on certain areas and putting critical habitats off limits.

Even if fishing is brought under control, the Bering Sea faces threats that originate thousands of miles away. Wind currents from industrial areas far to the south bring in pollutants like insecticides and heavy metals, which collect in the tissues of wildlife and the local Inuit people. At the same time the region has been warming up, and part of the reason may be the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Whatever the cause, sea ice has been retreating farther to the north, making life harder for polar bears and other ice-dwelling animals.

Asked which threat to the region is most pressing, Terry Springer replies with a fable of a puppy crossing the river with a knapsack. As the little dog crosses the river, people gradually add stones to the knapsack until the puppy drowns. "Which stone killed the puppy?" asks Springer.

The Bering Sea is far from dead, but the past offers warnings about the future. The famed George's Bank fishery off New England and Canada was once choked with cod. Now the population is so depleted that cod fishing has been banned in much of the area until the species recovers. In the still vibrant waters between Alaska and Siberia, humanity has another chance--perhaps the last chance--to prove it can take care of a crucial marine ecosystem.