How can multiple trophic levels be included in fisheries management?
While commercially exploited fish stocks off Alaska are well-managed, declining populations of some marine mammals (e.g., Steller sea lion, northern fur seal, Western Aleutian sea otters, Cook Inlet beluga whales) and some seabirds (e.g., short-tailed albatross, Steller’s eiders) have raised concerns about the adequacy of current management processes for addressing ecosystem-scale issues. Although federal law requires consideration of ecosystem effects, and although annual catch quotas for commercially exploited fish stocks are often reduced below the single species acceptable biological catches (ABCs) to reflect concerns about trophic relationships, progress towards adopting an ecosystem-based management regime has been halting. While the models of population dynamics used to determine ABC and overfishing levels (OFLs) increasingly include trophic relationships, and while a new generation of ecosystem models is being developed for the GOA and BSAI regions, lingering doubts about the s
