FISHERMEN - PARTNERS IN CLIMATE SOLUTIONS
Fishermen know climate change first-hand. Our lives and livelihoods are at the mercy of weather, tide, temperature, and the stability of a wild ecosystem. When we see big changes in our home waters, we pay attention. When your job is to feed people, you don’t look away when something challenges your ability to do it.
As ocean conditions change, we see ripple effects through our ocean habitat. Temperature, acidity and melting ice all play a part. Fish stocks move thousands of miles from their usual homes, droughts and high stream temperatures jeopardize salmon runs, smaller fish sizes decrease harvests, and acidification threatens the foundation of the food web. The coastal infrastructure essential to our jobs and communities is at risk, increasingly impacted by erosion and intensifying storms.
Alaska and its fishing communities are witnessing real time impacts of climate-driven changes, and we want to be part of the solution. We don’t have all the answers, but we know that staying resilient means working hard to understand what’s happening, and finding a broad spectrum of solutions that can keep us strong in the face of change. We ask our fellow fishermen and our leaders to take the same approach.
Updates
The Alaska Fisheries Science Center, NOAA presented at the North Pacific Fishery Management Council October 2022 Meetings on Impacts, Adaptations, and Vulnerability related to climate change.
The presentation included the following three points (summarized from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Annual Report 6):
1. It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land. Widespread and rapid changes in the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere and biosphere have occurred.
2. The scale of recent changes across the climate system as a whole – and the present state of many aspects of the climate system – are unprecedented over many centuries to many thousands of years.
3. Human-induced climate change is already affecting many weather and climate extremes in every region across the globe. Evidence of observed changes in extremes such as heatwaves, heavy precipitation, droughts, and tropical cyclones, and, in particular, their attribution to human influence, has strengthened since Annual Report 5.
The impact on Alaska’s fisheries is dramatic, with documented stock collapses in Bering Sea Crab, Yukon River Salmon, and Gulf of Alaska cod. The time is now to address climate change, and ALFA is working hard to do that at the National, state, and local level. Click here to read more about ALFA’s efforts to address climate change.
Click here to read a current article from NOAA on Central Gulf of Alaska Marine Heatwave Watch
Read letter from ALFA to NOAA Administrator - Request for Information on NOAA Actions to Advance the Goals and Recommendations in the Report on Conserving and Restoring America the Beautiful
ALFA recently signed a resolution opposing an oil and gas lease sale in Lower Cook Inlet and supporting renewable energy development. Click here to read the resolution
Follow the link to learn more about the challenges we face and options to act.