08/15/2022 | News release | Distributed by Public on 08/13/2022 18:02
We spent our days checking the net, standing at the fish table processing our catch, and then preserving it in various traditional methods. I remember traveling back to our village with an entire boat load of fish; there was so many fish to the point where my father's wooden boat flirted with water coming over the hull. That summer's worth of work fed our family throughout the year.
The marine environment is of high value to not only my family but also to all the rural and Indigenous communities in Alaska. This is because of its cultural and nutritional benefits, which harmonizeswith the term I learned as a child, "subsistence." It gives us life, reminds us of who we are, and helps us to pass that knowledge to others.
Come late July 2022, I found myself again standing next to a table working on fish with three other women, where winged creatures also congregated - except it was not to feed my family for the upcoming year.
I had joined the Alaska Fisheries Science Center Groundfish Assessment survey in the Western Aleutian Islands. I am working with other scientists on the F/V Alaska Providerto monitor various biological (e.g.,, length, weight, sex, otoliths, ear stones, and stomach contents) and environmental parameters (e.g., water temperature and salinity). Other bottom trawl surveys are conducted in the south eastern Bering Sea and northern Bering Sea (annually) and in the Gulf of Alaska (biennially)."We provide these survey data to stock assessment scientists (fish distribution and abundance). They combine these data with data collected by independent observers on commercial fishing boats to understand overall fish stock abundance and trends. From this, resource managers make decisions on how much fish can be sustainably caught in a given fishing year," said Cecilia O'Leary, Field Party Chief/Research Fishery Biologist.
Natural resource policies are informed by surveys like this groundfish and crab bottom trawl survey and other NOAA Fisheries research surveys. With all that is changing in the subArctic and Arctic, there is a significant and growing awareness of the importance of science-backed decision making to policies that broadly affect Alaskan marine-resource dependent communities.