Aleutian Islands Fishery Ecosystem Plan December 2007 “Our creation story tells us that we dropped from the heavens above onto these islands that stretch across the stormy seas like a lifeline.” by Allan Hayton, Alaska Initiative for Community Engagement (http://www.alaskaice.org/material.php?matID=535) ALEUTIAN ISLANDS FEP Table of Contents 1 INTRODUCTION 1 1.1 Purpose of the Fishery Ecosystem Plan .............................................................................1 1.2 Scope and role of the FEP ..................................................................................................2 1.3 Implementation and use of the FEP....................................................................................3 1.4 Approach of this document..................................................................................................5 2 GEOGRAPHIC DEFINITION OF ALEUTIAN ISLANDS ECOSYSTEM 6 3 UNDERSTANDING THE ALEUTIAN ISLANDS ECOSYSTEM 8 3.1 Historical perspectives ........................................................................................................8 3.1.1 Aleutian human populations 8 3.1.2 Aleutian animal populations 11 3.1.3 Commercial exploitation 16 3.2 Physical relationships........................................................................................................20 3.2.1 Physical description 20 3.2.2 Benthic habitat 20 3.2.3 Oceanography (pelagic habitat) 21 3.2.4 Climate (terrestrial habitat) 22 3.2.5 How is the Aleutian Islands ecosystem different from the surrounding ecosystems? 23 3.3 Biological relationships......................................................................................................25 3.3.1 Species distribution, richness, and diversity 25 3.3.2 Key species and energy flow in the regional AI food web 28 3.3.3 Predator-prey relationships for key species 32 3.3.4 Spatial food web relationships in the Aleutian Islands 38 3.3.5 Energy flow: leaky ecosystem boundaries 41 3.3.6 How is the Aleutian Islands ecosystem different from the surrounding ecosystems? 43 3.4 Socioeconomic relationships in the Aleutian Islands ecosystem ......................................44 3.4.1 Unangam Tunuu 44 3.4.2 Communities in the ecosystem today 44 3.4.3 Commercial fisheries 47 3.4.4 Subsistence fisheries 51 3.4.5 Recreational fisheries 53 3.4.6 Other human activities in the ecosystem 53 3.4.7 How is the Aleutian Islands ecosystem different from the surrounding ecosystems? 56 3.5 Management relationships ................................................................................................57 3.5.1 Regulatory boundaries 57 3.5.2 Federal groundfish fisheries 59 3.5.3 Halibut fishery 64 3.5.4 Scallop fishery 64 3.5.5 King and tanner crab fishery 65 3.5.6 State-managed or parallel fisheries 66 3.5.7 Fishery bycatch 67 December 2007 ALEUTIAN ISLANDS FEP 4 ECOSYSTEM ASSESSMENT 71 4.1 Methodology......................................................................................................................71 4.1.1 Risk assessment 72 4.1.2 Implications for management 73 4.1.3 Tracking critical interactions 73 4.2 Climate and physical interactions......................................................................................74 4.3 Predator-prey Interactions.................................................................................................81 4.4 Fishing Effects Interactions ...............................................................................................96 4.5 Regulatory Interactions ...................................................................................................110 4.6 Other socioeconomic activity interactions .......................................................................117 4.7 Summary of risk assessment findings.............................................................................131 4.8 Cumulative interactions...................................................................................................133 5 MANAGEMENT OBJECTIVES 134 5.1 Council and State of Alaska management policies .........................................................134 5.1.1 BSAI Groundfish FMP 134 5.1.2 BSAI King and Tanner Crab FMP 135 5.1.3 State of Alaska King and Tanner Crab Management Policy 135 5.1.4 Alaska Board of Fisheries Management Plan for forage fish in the waters of Alaska 136 5.2 Matching AI ecosystem interactions to management objectives.....................................137 6 PRIORITIES AND CONSIDERATIONS FOR THE COUNCIL 140 6.1 Summary of interactions and opportunities for Council action ........................................140 6.2 Area-specific management for the Aleutian Islands ecosystem......................................146 6.3 Improve process to account for ecosystem considerations in fishery management .......146 6.4 Dialogue with non-fishery agencies.................................................................................148 6.5 Data gaps and research needs .......................................................................................148 7 WHAT IS THE ‘VALUE ADDED’ OF THIS FEP PROCESS? 152 8 FUTURE STEPS 153 8.1 How to use the FEP ........................................................................................................153 8.2 How to build on the FEP..................................................................................................154 9 REFERENCES AND PREPARERS 156 9.1 References......................................................................................................................156 9.2 Preparers.........................................................................................................................164 December 2007 ALEUTIAN ISLANDS FEP APPENDICES 165 Appendix A Community meetings and public input on the development of the FEP..............166 Appendix B History of natural resource exploitation ...............................................................168 Appendix C Species listed under the Endangered Species Act .............................................178 Appendix D Food web interaction strength tables ..................................................................179 Appendix E Sample size for spatial diet data in the AI ...........................................................186 Appendix F Research activity in the AI...................................................................................187 December 2007 ALEUTIAN ISLANDS FEP Tables and Figures Tables Table 3-1 Range of seabirds that spend some or all of the year in the Aleutian Islands ecosystem .....................41 Table 3-2 Demographic data for Adak and Atka....................................................................................................45 Table 3-3 Number of vessels harvesting and plants (onshore or offshore) processing AI fish, by species in 2005. .....................................................................................................................................................49 Table 3-4 Regulatory responsibility in Aleutian Islands .........................................................................................58 Table 3-5 Catch, in mt, of groundfish FMP-managed species in the Aleutian Islands and the eastern Bering Sea, in 2005. .........................................................................................................................................60 Table 3-6 Current management measures in Bering Sea/ Aleutian Islands (BSAI) groundfish fisheries that apply across the management area, and those that are AI subarea-specific........................................61 Table 3-7 State management measures ...............................................................................................................65 Table 5-1 Matching interactions to fishery management objectives ....................................................................138 Table 6-1 Summary of interactions......................................................................................................................141 Table 6-2 Data Gaps for the Aleutian Islands ecosystem....................................................................................149 Figures Figure 1-1 Scope of a Fishery Ecosystem Plan........................................................................................................3 Figure 1-2 Schematic of how the FEP will interact with the Council process............................................................4 Figure 2-1 Boundary for the Aleutian Islands Fishery Ecosystem Plan ....................................................................6 Figure 2-2 Map of the Aleutian Islands ecosystem...................................................................................................7 Figure 3-1 Estimated population trend of the Aleutian archipelago, 1740-2006. ....................................................10 Figure 3-2 Populations for present-day Aleutian Islands communities, 1880-2000. ...............................................11 Figure 3-3 Aleutian Islands socio-ecological history (1740-2005): significant impacts on Aleuts, commercial exploitation, and species introductions and extinctions.........................................................................12 Figure 3-4 Stock assessment biomass trends for key commercial species in the Aleutian Islands, 1960-2005.....15 Figure 3-5 Survey biomass trends for major fish species, from the Aleutian Islands bottom trawl surveys, 1980-2006. ............................................................................................................................................15
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