University of Alaska Fairbanks SCHOOL OF FISHERIES AND OCEAN SCIENCES  
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FITC graduate student Mary Beth Loewen. Photo credit: ???.

Academic Programs

Sustainable seafood harvesting

Increasing the recovery and utilization of Alaska's fishery resources is a major goal for Alaska's state and federal fish managers and for FITC. The development of new technology to reduce the capture and waste of non-target species is a critical national and international concern. These two research areas are where much of FITC's efforts in Sustainable Harvesting has occurred in the past. Past projects in this area include:

  • Reducing juvenile mortality in Alaska pollock harvesting through modified net design, reducing bycatch through gear alteration and the design of artificial baits.
  • Digital Observer Project—Development of Fish Recognition and Weight Estimation Software.
  • Feasibility study for Alaska Herring Food Product Diversification.

Other areas of increasing interest have to do with the interdecadal changes in faunal assemblages. We would foster economic stability in coastal Alaska as its communities enter the next century if we could predict these changes in species abundance. A multi-faceted approach is likely to be required to effectively track these changes and predict future directions, but developing this will be a challenge without detailed background information. Unfortunately, much of the informational infrastructure taken for granted by scientists in the lower 48 has yet to be created for Alaska.

FITC, together with scientists at SFOS and in state and federal agencies, will work to address some of these problems. Projects we have been pursuing in this area include the analysis of Steller sea lion diets through scat analysis, analysis of forage fish abundance and availability. In the future we hope to develop a greater understanding of the ecosystem dynamics of Alaskan waters, develop marine faunal and floral lists for western Alaska for correlating species abundances, measuring rates of development in food web invertebrate species as a function of temperature. Another new area of sustainable harvesting research is probably encoded in the Essential Fish Habitat provisions of the Magnuson–Stevens Act.